AZR sets up the Aggadah as Israel's second classic — and in a certain sense, superior to the Halakhah in the reach of its audience:
"The literature of Halakhah, for all its importance, is but the province of the learned… But the Aggadah — it is the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob, the possession of the entire people… the choicest fruit of original Hebrew thought, a sea of native poetry, the like of which is not found in the literatures of other nations." AZR, "The Arrangement of Aggadic Literature," Ben-Yehuda read/28068.
And its power, in his view, is existential: it "rebuked, guided, caressed, consoled, breathed the spirit of life, and girded the people with courage"; "whoever has not studied Aggadah has never tasted the taste of the fear of Heaven" (Tanna DeVei Eliyahu).
AZR was not merely a compiler but a critical scholar. In "The Arrangement of Aggadic Literature" he displays the erudition of Wissenschaft des Judentums: textual variants, confusions in the names of the sages cited, and duplications among the midrashim — and he shows how comparison of sources corrects corruptions and restores the correct version. He enumerates his predecessors: Yalkut Shimoni, "Ein Yaakov," Bacher, Bialik–Ravnitzky ("Sefer HaAggadah," The Book of Legends), and the scholars Zunz, Weiss, Buber, and Schechter. Wissenschaft des Judentums
The "crowning glory" of Binyamin Ze'ev (Wilhelm) Bacher's work was "Legends of the Tannaim and Amoraim" (eight volumes, 25 years of labor). AZR was pained that the book — "our book" — was written in German, and rose to translate it:
"And in my zeal I set out, with my feeble powers, to restore the crown to its former glory, and to make it a Hebrew book not only in its content but in its language as well." AZR, "Legends of the Tannaim, Translator's Preface" (Dvir, 5682/1922), Ben-Yehuda read/64916. (With thanks to R. S.H. Kook and others.)
"The first part I translated in the days of the Jaffa deportation, in Safed and in Tiberias (5677–5678 / 1917–1918), and I thank the Lord for providing me in those days with this work, which was my solace and did not let my spirit sink into the sea of terrors that surrounded us." Ibid. (On the deportation, see "The Jaffa Exile.")
In the very midst of the Jaffa deportation, with hunger and torment all around, translating the Aggadah was AZR's spiritual anchor. The preface is signed: "Written in Jerusalem, on the eve of Rosh Hodesh Tammuz, 5679 [1919]."
Beyond Bacher, AZR held a national vision: to gather all of Aggadic literature — corrected, annotated, and scholarly — in a single edition:
"From the bookcase in every Hebrew home twenty volumes shall shine forth… our original literature, which has no like in the literature of the world, and which can be a living wellspring of faith and knowledge and a source of poetry and vision to the end of all generations… Happy is the eye that shall behold all this!" AZR, "The Arrangement of Aggadic Literature." (The initiative began in wartime study sessions, with R. Y.L. Berger, who perished in the Jaffa exile.)
The Aggadah accompanied AZR from his youth (his book "Ma'agalei Tzedek" gathered moral teachings from the whole of the Aggadah) to his old age: as the people's heritage, as a field of science, and as a national enterprise. The opening of the sources to all, which he preached (see "AZR the Educator," "Bialik Unbound the Aggadah"), here became the very work of his hands.