"החזנים" הבלתי-ממומשים: הרטוריקה הקהילתית של ש"י עגנון

The article presents Agnon's story "The Cantors" ("Hahazanim", 'Ir u-Melo'a) as a case of the community rhetoric, the purpose of which is the origination of a new and revitalized community. If the rhetoric is viewed as a way of thinking and creation, of symbolic establishment, examination, renovation, correction, and sharing of norms and values, then the central value, on which the community rhetoric in this story is focused, is the destiny. Several cantors presented in the story did not realize their destination, and the story's heroine Miriam Dvora is the purest case of the unrealizable cantor, of the possibility that cannot be realized (in the context of the story) and always remains painful and despicable (even in the eyes of the heroine), but also creative and productive. The non-realization of גליון ב', תשע"ג - 2012 2 the destiny of a cantor or a "potential cantor" such as Miriam Dvora (a case of the Agnonian hakhmatsa) is revealed as realization of the central values of the community and as a promise of its revitalization and perhaps even of realization of its destiny in the future.