The Agunah

A deeply affecting parable of law, mercy, and communal judgment centered on one woman's fate in interwar Vilna—from the acclaimed author of Sons and Daughters, hailed by the New York Times as one of the ten best works of historical fiction of 2025.

“I am an agunah, rabbi, an agunah. For more than fifteen years I’ve waited for my husband to come back from the war. But he has not come and I cannot wait any longer . . . ”

Merl Tswilling has been married only a year when her husband is drafted into the army at the start of World War I and disappears without a trace. Years pass, the war ends, and still there is no word. Under Jewish law, Merl, once "carefree and gay," becomes an agunah—an “anchored woman,” bound to a missing husband and barred from beginning a new life. When she at last searches for permission to remarry, after fifteen years of waiting, her private anguish is thrust into the public spotlight.

The case of the agunah sparks a conflict between two unforgettable rabbinic figures: Reb David Zelver, a young and independent-minded rabbi who believes the law must make room for mercy; and Reb Levi Hurvitz, his formidable rival, for whom strict adherence is the highest form of justice. Around Merl gathers a volatile cast of neighbors, suitors, gossips, and opportunists, eager to debate, advise, condemn, and intervene, as her case spreads from house to house and shul to shul.

Reissued after five decades with an illuminating new introduction by Rachel Kadish, The Agunah stands as one of Chaim Grade’s most intimate and devastating works. In the seamstress Merl Tswilling, he has given us a literary heroine of the likes of Hester Prynne—a woman whose private life becomes the moral testing ground of an entire community.