"The Rich Man's Daughter" is the story of which Streit wrote that it was "held aloft as a banner by the critics, and not without justice." Ben-Yehuda (read/8036) It is a social novel in 12 chapters about Liza, daughter of the rich man Elimelech, who develops a revulsion toward her parents' world of wealth and commerce.
AZR portrays Liza as one whose love for her parents breaks against her hatred of wealth. The following passage illustrates the social realism that was, according to the critics, an innovation in Hebrew prose:
"Her hatred of wealth grew ever stronger in her heart — and how could she love her rich parents? Her father, with all his multitude of dealings so base in her eyes, with all his buying and his selling, his profits and his losses, his curses and his charities; and her mother, with her shrieking, her bustling, and the jangling of her keys — all these stirred in Liza's heart a loathing of the soul." AZR, "The Rich Man's Daughter," ch. 1 · Ben-Yehuda
At the same time, AZR does not turn Elimelech the father into a caricature; he shows his love for his daughter as the single point of humanity in his commercial world:
"On returning in the evening, before lying down to sleep, he was accustomed to stand for a while beside Liza's bed and gaze at her beautiful features... and a singular delight would then fill his whole heart, a delight the like of which he did not find even in earning a hundred thousand shekels in a single moment." AZR, "The Rich Man's Daughter," ch. 1 · Ben-Yehuda
Streit pointed to a miniature sketch of twelve lines, "A Mother's Prayer" (in the series "MiMasoret Am," "From Folk Tradition"), as the summit of AZR's purity: "few are its like in our literature for limpidity of soul and simplicity of expression." Behind this small work lies a new literary finding.
In her study "The Tale of the Mother's Prayer: Between Midrash and Belles-Lettres" (Mabua 35, 5761/2001), Dr. Dalia Hoshen reveals that AZR's text was included in S.Y. Agnon's anthology "Yamim Noraim" ("Days of Awe"), under the heading "Ma'aseh" ("A Tale"), signed with AZR's name. Dalia Hoshen, Mabua 35
Hoshen conducts a comparative reading of AZR's original ("The Mother's Prayer") against the version in Agnon's anthology, and argues that Agnon reworked the text, a shift "from the language of the Haskalah to the language of the Sages." According to her analysis, AZR belonged to the writers of "HaMahalakh HeHadash" ("the New Course"), whose literature constitutes an intermediate stage between the literature of the Haskalah and modern Hebrew literature:
"When one compares AZR's original passage, titled 'The Mother's Prayer,' with the 'Ma'aseh' found in Agnon's anthology, it seems that apart from AZR's name, nothing whatever remains of the tale of the mother's longings." Dalia Hoshen, "The Tale of the Mother's Prayer," Mabua 35 (5761/2001)
Until now we had documented only one connection between AZR and Agnon — the background mention of his name in "Temol Shilshom" ("Only Yesterday"). This is a second, deeper connection: Agnon did not merely mention AZR, he reworked a piece of his and placed it in one of his books. It is testimony to AZR's standing as a source to which the greats of Hebrew literature turned — not only as a figure, but as a text.
Reading the work confirms what the critics saw: AZR stands at a transitional stage in Hebrew literature. He belonged to the writers of "the New Course" — no longer Haskalah literature, but not yet the fully modern Hebrew literature. Hoshen This explains Streit's distinction: AZR is a social realist ("The Rich Man's Daughter"), yet also steeped in tradition and in an ancient Jewish idiom ("From Folk Tradition," "A Mother's Prayer"). The two poles — social realism and traditional purity — live in him together.
Approaching the text itself reveals what a biographical account can never give:
"The Rich Man's Daughter" shows AZR the social realist, critic of wealth, who does not relinquish the complexity of his characters. "A Mother's Prayer" shows AZR the purifier, whose text Agnon deemed worthy of reworking and inclusion in his anthology. The two poles together are precisely the "man of the people" (ben-am) that Streit described.