Haaretz Almanac

As one of his publishing projects, Schocken launched a yearly Hebrew almanac that would “demonstrate, in a colorful and never dull mixture, the life-affirming and life-forming powers of the Spirit. It will call attention to the genuine values of the European cultural world – that is, to turn again to its earnestness and to defend it against all anti-intellectual prejudices. At the same time, it must free the Jewish cultural world from its captivity within the status as ‘nationalist property’.”

The first edition of the Almanac, called Luach Haaretz, came out in 1940. In 1942, the Almanac published Agnon’s This and That, just as Haaretz carried reports of mass killings in Eastern Europe. The 1943 almanac began with a medieval Hebrew poem from the Schocken collection, followed by a report on the Nazi death camps in Poland and the Ukraine. Then came a Hebrew translation of a Goethe poem.

Throughout World War II (1940-1945), Schocken’s son Gershom edited the Almanac. “In times of disaster”, Gershom told Agnon, “we must do our utmost to remind ourselves of our values.” Throughout the darkest period of Jewish history, the Almanac combined an overview of politics with poetry, fiction, and occasional pieces on sociology, history, literary criticism, and education.