Kafka-Atlas

Kafka Reception in by June Leavitt

Earliest Interpretations of Kafka: Tormented Jew and Zionism It is advisable to consider , before there was a Jewish State, as background for the historical trends that developed in the reception of Kafka in Israel. After Kafka's death in 1924, Felix Weltsch, who grew up with Kafka in Prague, wrote the only full page obituary on him. It appeared in the Prague Zionist newspaper Selbstwehr of which Weltsch was Editor-in- Chief:

[…] the soul that moved his [Kafka's] writings was Jewish throughout. His torment was Jewish as were his problematics and their consequences … He was deeply interested in everything concerning Palestine and its reconstruction. (Kafka: Exhibition 1883-1924 Catalogue)

This understanding of Kafka and his career by a close friend made the claim that his writings were an expression of a Jewish soul tormented by a Jewish problem. By pointing to biographical details of Kafka's life, Weltsch suggested that Kafka's tormenting problem was alleviated by his interest in the burgeoning Zionist movement which sought reconstruction of the Jewish nation in its historic homeland. It is not surprising then that a week after Kafka's death, the first Hebrew translation of a Kafka excerpt would appear in Ha Poel ha Zair, the newspaper of the Young Zionist Workers' party in Mandatory Palestine which was then under British rule. The goal of this party was the restoration of a Jewish homeland and the creation of a new Jew, who would revive Hebrew language, native literature and culture. Among news items about activities of the Zionist Workers' Party, collective farms, the new wave of immigration to Mandatory Palestine and poems in fledgling modern Hebrew, the Kafka fragment appeared. The editors of Ha Poel ha Zair published "The Sudden Walk," a one-page sketch from the collection which Kafka had published as Betrachtung in 1908 (Ha Poel ha Zair 33: (1924):10-11). At the bottom of the page appeared a note explaining who was:

About a week ago, [the author] died in a sanitarium in Vienna. The Jewish-German writer and prose poet Franz Kafka, one of the outstanding young poets in Prague, and master of the new tendency in literature, was the closest friend of . Fate decreed for him a short and tragic life. He was 41 when he died.

It would be another eleven years before Ha Poel ha Zair would translate any more excerpts. Kafka-Atlas

Max Brod and the Kafka Legacy Max Brod, the famous Prague Jewish writer who was Kafka's closest confidante, attempted to establish a literary legacy for his departed friend. At the memorial service held in Prague eight days after Kafka's death, Brod declared him to be a great prophet in whom "the splendor of the Shekina [divine presence] shone" (Diamant 128). In Brod's hands, Kafka was transformed into an Old Testament prophet embodying the Divine presence in the world. Brod's mystification of Kafka's "Jewishness" was to affect fateful decisions he would make. After the memorial service, Kafka's parents asked Max Brod to go through their son's desk in their apartment. Among a mass of papers which Kafka had never seen fit to publish, Brod found a letter addressed to himself requesting that everything Kafka left behind "in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters, my own and others, sketches[…] be burned unread." Brod said to himself that he would do no such thing. He devoted the next three years to assure that Kafka's three unfinished novels would appear in print. After editing, completing and titling them, he convinced a small avant-garde Berlin house to publish the manuscript of The Trial (1925). A publisher in Munich published The Castle (1926) and The Man who Disappeared (1927). When both publishers were forced to close down because of the severe depression in the Weimar Republic which was soon followed by the rise of Nazism and racial laws, Brod enlisted the help of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. Together with Andre Gide, Herman Hesse, and Thomas Mann, they issued a public statement urging publication of an edition of Kafka's collected works which would include fragments of stories, diaries and letters. This, they claimed, would be "a spiritual act of unusual dimensions, especially now during times of chaos" (The Trial, viii). This inspired proclamation did not move Salman Schocken when Brod offered his Berlin publishing house the world rights to all of Kafka's works. Doubting the public appeal and marketability of the novels, stories and letters, he had to be urged by his editor-in-chief Moritz Spitzer, "to see in Kafka the purest, archetypal Jewish voice which would give meaning to the new reality that was befalling German Jews" (The Trial, x). Giving in to his editor's persuasion, Schocken published an anthology of diary entries and short stories in 1934 and three novels in 1935. As a result of the Schocken edition, a modicum of interest in Franz Kafka was kindled in Mandatory Palestine which was then being repopulated by Jewish immigrants fleeing Nazi Europe. In April 1935 once again the Young Zionist Worker's newspaper translated an excerpt from a Kafka story into modern Hebrew, this time "Report to an Academy" (Ha Poel ha Zair 26-27 (1935):16-18). The original story published during Kafka's lifetime was a great deal longer than the short excerpt which appeared in the newspaper suggesting that editors chose one of the newly published fragments. Six months later, in the same Young Zionist Workers' newspaper, a review of The Castle came out, titled Ha Armon (The Palace) (Ha Poel ha Zair 2-3 (1935):13. Later Hebrew translations would re-title it as Ha Tira. The reviewer, Israel Cohen, extolled the novel, calling it a multi-dimensional work. He claimed it was a wonderful adventure story, full of tension Kafka-Atlas

with a marvelous protagonist who faces obstacles, conflicts and cruelty. He promised that even a religious person would be satisfied with the questions raised about God's relationship to mankind and the running of the world. The author ended the article by saying it would be commendable if Kafka's works would be translated into Hebrew. The next time Kafka's writings were published in Hebrew in Ha Poel ha Zair was after a massacre of Jewish settlers in the Galilee. The front page of the newspaper dated March 23, 1937 was designed as a banner of mourning with eulogies for the victims. Inside the newspaper, three prose pieces of Kafka appeared "Crossbreed," "The Top" and "On Parables," (Ha Poel ha Zair 25-26 (1937):12-13. One might ask what the massacres had to do with a prose poem about an animal that is half lamb or a short story about a philosopher entranced with the spinning of a top. There was an obvious discrepancy between Kafka's obscure worldview and that of Zionists in Mandatory Palestine, which may explain why Hebrew translations were published infrequently. According to Zionist ideology, forming a socialist society of kibbutzim, developing agricultural training groups youth movements and activating paramilitary groups to defend Jewish settlements such as those in the Galilee which had come under attack, were the highest ideals. As Zionist workers and militia pursued their pragmatic program for the creation of the New Jew who tilled and harvested the soil of the historic homeland, it was left to the German-Jewish Zionist intellectuals living in Europe and Palestine to speculate about Kafka's prose.

Early Discussions of Kafka Among German-Jews The first discourse about Kafka was concerned with the nature of the ancient Jew. Since Weltsch, Brod, Buber and Spitzer at Schocken had created an image of Kafka as biblical, spiritual and prophetic, these thinkers began to ask what form of Jewish essence Kafka's writings might embody. In Berlin where Martin Buber lived prior to his immigration in 1938 to Palestine, he suggested that Kafka's The Trial "was a rendering of ancient Jewish Gnostic ideas" (Knowledge of Man 145). He noted that Kafka was struggling with Psalm 82 in his diary at the same time that he was writing The Trial. Buber believed that Kafka had been troubled by that Psalm for years, for Kafka had asked him about it on a visit to Berlin (Knowledge of Man 1 45). The content of the Psalm reflected, in Buber’s estimation, vestiges of Gnostic mythology that concerned demons and demigods who fatefully determine the destiny of humanity" (Leavitt 121). The attempt to shed light on Kafka's alleged ancient Jewish essence motivated the German- born intellectual and scholar Gershom Scholem, who had immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1923. A decade after Kafka's death, he argued that Kafka's writings were a secularized representation of the kabalistic conception of the world (Grözinger 1). Scholem qualified this claim to Walter Benjamin a German-Jewish literary critic and philosopher. By Kabbalah he chiefly meant The Zohar, the classic text of Jewish mysticism which first appeared in Spain in the early part of the 13th century. By "Kafka's writings" he meant The Trial. Scholem believed that The Trial reflected Zoharic thought because Kafka, in his Kafka-Atlas

opinion, had been studying the Zohar in which very old Gnostic traditions had been absorbed. "The dark world of Joseph K reminded Scholem of the dark world of the Gnostics whom he considered the forerunners of the Kabbala" (Horowitz 23). Buber and Scholem attempted to frame Kafka's novel The Trial with Kabbala and a form of antiquated Jewish mysticism which they referred to as Gnosticism.

Walter Benjamin suggested a different ancient Judaic paradigm. Benjamin, who had escaped from Germany to France with the rise of Hitler and wrote about Franz Kafka on the 10th anniversary of his death in 1934, claimed that Kafka's writings – by which he meant primarily the parables – represented a mutation of Jewish rabbinic teachings which traditionally had two interconnected parts. Halacha dealt with Jewish Law and aggadah dealt with stories, legends, folklore, anecdotes and maxims that illustrate these laws in a symbolic way. Benjamin wrote that Kafka's parables illustrate laws which exist outside the text. They are aggadah without a doctrine, unknowable and inaccessible (Sandbank 2). Benjamin was not able to contribute more to the discussion on Kafka. In 1940 with the defeat of France by Nazi forces, he escaped with other Jewish refugees to Southern France near the border with Spain hoping to get a visa to the United States. When the Franco government ordered Spanish police to arrest Jewish refugees and deport them back to France, Benjamin took an overdose of morphine tablets.

Kafka in Mandatory Palestine In 1939, a year before Benjamin's death, Brod and Weltsch boarded the last train out of Prague, Czechoslovakia to cross the border (Weltsch 20). The train left three hours before the onslaught of the Wehrmacht. In a suitcase Brod carried, were unpublished documents, letters and manuscripts of Kafka. As the train traveled through the in areas already occupied by Nazi forces, Brod glanced anxiously at the suitcase (Weltsch 20). After an arduous journey by rail and ship, Brod arrived on the "soil of Zion" with "only one plan […] to act for the memory of my friend Franz Kafka in this country that he missed" ("Kafka's Last Trial," NY Times). According to Weltsch, Brod deposited the manuscripts at the Schocken Library in Jerusalem, (Weltsch 20) though apparently soon after, regretting this, he requested the manuscripts be returned to him. Salman Schocken, who had acquired the world rights for Kafka's works from Brod, had first fled to Prague after the Nazis had shut down his publishing house in Berlin.

Before Hitler's forces invaded Czechoslovakia, Schocken had immigrated to Palestine with a number of Kafka manuscripts. He hoped to counteract Nazi propaganda by showing the great gifts Jews had brought to the body of German literature and culture. "He found it particularly important that these books appear while the Jews were being closed out of German intellectual and spiritual life" ("Conversations about Schocken Books"). However, in Palestine, Schocken found his vision thwarted. “The climate and the political realities of life were at odds with the intellectual Zionism he had cultivated in Germany; the Kafka-Atlas

builders of a new state were by and large more concerned with the practical demands of agriculture, urban planning, and social welfare. There was little demand for the treasures of ancient Hebrew literature" ("Conversations about Schocken Books"). In 1940, Schocken sailed to the United States with his family, leaving one grown son in Palestine. Five years later with Hannah Arendt and Nahum Glatzer, he founded Schocken Books in New York. Franz Kafka became the center of their program, a step that was to lead to a post-war Kafka craze in America. According to Hannah Arendt, "Though during his lifetime he could not make a living as a writer, he will now keep generations of intellectuals gainfully employed and well-fed" (The Trial, xii). In Palestine, Brod was left to build a Kafka legacy. Guardian of the suitcase containing Kafka's unpublished manuscripts, Brod attracted fellow thinkers, "for whom Kafka is more than any other modern writer — the 20th-century Job” ("Kafka's Last Trial," NY Times). Comparing his friend this time to the biblical Job, the ultimate symbol of restoration after unjust suffering, Brod claimed that “the Hitler era, the era of destruction would be followed by an age of the infinite creation in the spirit of Kafka – a good era for humanity, and for Judaism, which has again professed salvation to the peoples by one of its finest sons” ("Kafka's Last Trial. NY Times). Brod's agenda was to merge Zionist dreams with a messianic image of Kafka leading a new world order, the fulfillment of the Hebrew people's spiritual hopes. Neither Arendt's predictions about Kafka keeping generations of intellectuals gainfully employed, nor Brod's messianic agenda were fulfilled in Mandatory Palestine. The Promised Land was "so poor that even the indigenous population could not achieve a decent standard of living" (Fiedler 57). In addition to being a backward country where survival was difficult, the country was beset by internal turmoil. With the outbreak of World War II and the annihilation of the Jewish populations in Europe, the conflict between Jewish settlers and the ruling British authorities in the Mandate escalated. As a result of the British "White Paper" restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine despite Hitler's final solution, Jewish underground organizations worked covertly to bring refugees illegally into the Mandate. Militant Zionist organizations began to operate against the British. With a rise of Arab attacks against Jewish settlers, Jewish paramilitary defense groups made violent reprisals. Max Brod, fearing that his suitcase might not survive, wrote an urgent letter on May 5, 1940 to the Rector of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem:

The turbulent times we live in cause me to write to turn to you with an urgent request. Would it be possible for you to keep a suitcase of mine containing very important manuscripts? In this suitcase is the estate of Franz Kafka, my musical compositions and my unpublished diaries. You understand that this suitcase, most precious to me, in these times cannot be secure in a private place. I would like it to be secured with you, if it is possible for anything today to be secure (Max Brod Archive, Jewish National Library, Jerusalem)

For reasons unknown the suitcase was never deposited at the Hebrew University. Brod remained the guardian of the Kafka estate in a land that could hardly sustain itself let alone spawn an intellectual industry based on the works of his beloved friend. The only work of Kafka-Atlas

Kafka's that appeared in Hebrew translation in the 1940s was Amerika, published by Schocken's son in Jerusalem (1945). Yet Max Brod did not give up. One year after World War II ended in, he wrote a lengthy essay on Franz Kafka in German which was translated for a monthly Hebrew newspaper of art and literature (Gazit 11-12 (1946):18-22). In this essay, he discussed letters, diaries, prose poems and aphorisms of Franz Kafka slated to come out in a new volume with Schocken, New York. By alluding to these unknown works, Brod gave the Jewish settlements in Mandatory Palestine exposure to Franz Kafka. At the same time, he refashioned the Kafka legacy for the Jewish settlers. His deceased friend's writings, he claimed, reflect essential phenomena in human suffering. Comparing him to Tolstoy and also Kierkegaard, Brod opened the way for more universalistic readings of Kafka years after the War of Independence and the establishment of the State of Israel.

Kafka Reception in the Early Years of the State of Israel After the War of Independence in 1948 and the establishment of the State of Israel, one might think the Israeli populace might have utilized Kafka as a symbol of the fulfillment of national aspirations as Brod had fervently hoped. But this was not to be the case. In the nascent years of the State, Israelis may not have found Franz Kafka relevant to their lives. A young literary guard was burgeoning for whom Hebrew was their native language or language of their childhood. They saw their mission as bringing a new being into the world – the modern Hebrew writer for whom the "experience of the War of Independence and setting up a new country became the most important trademark" (Almog 15). The distinctive symbols of this generation were pioneer-settler cum soldiers, farmers, workers and builders. These Israelis, known as sabras, were contemptuous of and belittled the Diaspora Jew. "We praised and exalted ourselves as New Jews, a generation which had been reborn and burned all its bridges" (Fiedler 61). Franz Kafka, who lived in the Diaspora and wrote in German about the working and middle classes of Prague, had little to do with the definitions being formed about the nature of the New Jew. Whatever interest was generated about Kafka in the early years of Israel would come from a small circle of the older intellectual immigrants in Tel Aviv who knew Max Brod. It is quite odd that this intellectual circle only became captivated by Franz Kafka in the 1950s'. Leah Goldberg, an immigrant from Königsberg who had studied in Germany, dedicated herself to composing modern Hebrew poetry and children's literature in Tel Aviv, wrote an essay on Franz Kafka in 1953 (Leah Goldberg Archive, National Library, Jerusalem) in which she marvels that the intellectual world had just discovered Kafka.1 She claimed that a clamor was being made which was at once emotional, confusing and embarrassing. For she feared the excitement over Kafka would soon subside and he would be cast into oblivion with other courageous poets who had crossed the formal boundaries of literature. Relating

1 The essay in the Leah Goldberg Archive at the NNL is not dated nor is the periodical from which the article is cut given a title. Since the article is about Gustav Janouch's book "Conversations with Franz Kafka, I assume her article was written shortly after the publication of that book. Kafka-Atlas

to The Castle which she had read in German (it had not yet been translated into Hebrew) she put forth an interpretation of Kafka which reflects a post-Independence understanding of the Diaspora Jewish writer:

Kafka desired, desired greatly, a solution and liberation from his current feelings and awareness. The symbol of that liberation was a homeland. He repeats, homeland several times [in The Castle]. This spells out the Land of Israel.

She continues with this claim: Kafka's love for Israel was his only passion where personal identity associated with a specific place on a geographic map. Goldberg's interpretation of Kafka inverted that made by Brod. Brod saw Kafka as a symbol of the fulfillment of the Hebrew people's hopes: Goldberg saw the fulfillment in the State of Israel, the ultimate state which Kafka sought. Her understanding was similar to that expressed by Felix Weltsch in his eulogy for Kafka and the book he wrote over three decades later, Religiosity and Humor in the Life and Works of Franz Kafka. Weltsch's book, published in German in 1957 and Hebrew in 1959, brought to light excerpts from many Kafka texts which had never been translated into Hebrew before – letters, correspondences with Milena Jesenská and a selection of diary entries. In his discussions, Weltsch frequently highlighted Kafka's passion for Zionism. He did so, he claims, in an effort to illuminate the personal side of his deceased friend who was having such a great influence on European intellectual life. Gabriel Moked, a Holocaust survivor who had emigrated from Poland to Tel Aviv in 1946 was one of those intellectuals most influenced by Kafka's writings. Ten years after emigrating, Moked published the first Hebrew book-length critical commentary on Franz Kafka, Critical Essays on the Metamorphosis. In his foreword, he bemoaned that few translations of Kafka's works including Die Verwandlung existed in Hebrew. Therefore, he had to render into Hebrew selected passages. He claimed that this pointed to a dire need. All important works of Kafka should be translated into Hebrew in the near future. Moked, who used Kierkegaard's existential theories to explain the predicament of Gregor Samsa, was the first Israeli scholar to lead the discussion on Kafka away from Judaism and Zionism. Deliberations about Kafka, universalistic, Jewish, and Zionistic continued, but with less frequency and intensity in the 1960s. Despite the fact that Shimon Sandbank's translation of The Castle appeared in Hebrew in 1967, there is a dearth of critical response to Kafka during this period of time in Israel. One reason is that hostilities had flared up with neighboring Arab states. In 1967, Israel fought a major war against the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Another reason is that Max Brod died in 1968 and left his posthumous writings and Kafka's literary estate to his secretary Esther Hoffe. Whereas Brod tried to keep the legacy of Kafka alive by attracting a circle of intellectuals around the contents of the suitcase, Hoffe had no interest and possibly no ability to do this. For these reasons, and one can cite many others, Leah Goldberg's prediction about the interest in Kafka dying down seemed to have come partially true. Kafka-Atlas

Yet, for a few intellectuals, the passion for Kafka did not die down. One can only assume that certain translations and critical works on Kafka which surfaced in the 1970s were begun during the lull. Sandbank's Hebrew translation of Descriptions of a Struggle appeared in 1971. Three years later, his book The Path of Hesitation: Uncertainty and its Revelations in the Creations of Franz Kafka came out in Hebrew. Joseph Yerushalmi from the University of Haifa compiled a bibliography, such as it was, of Kafka material written in Hebrew. In 1975, the bibliography was published.2 Hillel Barzel's publications in the 1970s compared Kafka to Samuel Beckett or to Eugene Ionesco. Barzel also compared Franz Kafka to A.B. Yehoshua, a prominent figure in the new generation of Israeli writers. Yehoshua later explained when he discovered Kafka and why Kafka came to exert a great influence on him.

World War II was a trauma that paralyzed writers. It was something metaphysical, diabolical. To deal with this demonic reality, writers like Beckett, Ionesco, Sartre, Camus, turned to the absurd, the symbolic. And we, in Israel, we did too – for Israeli reasons and for world reasons ("The Writer Still Shaping Israel's Identity").

In their attempt to come to grips with devastating affects of the Hitler era, Yehoshua and others in the new generation of Israeli writers found in Kafka, a source of inspiration. One other important writer in this new generation to whom Barzel compared Kafka was S.Y. Agnon, a pioneer in the development of Modern Hebrew fiction who later won the Novel prize in literature. Agnon had resided in Berlin at the time Kafka lived there during the last year of his life.

Kafka Reception in Israel 1980 - present The first conference on Franz Kafka in Israel took place in 1983. It was initiated by the Austrian Embassy in Tel Aviv. According to Mark Gelber, now a renowned scholar of German-Jewish culture and literature who presided over the conference then, the initiative to have the small congress with distinguished international guests did not originate in Israel: Despite the fact that certain Israeli intellectuals found him intriguing, their students often did not. His writings didn't resonate with them." 3 This is all the more striking because in 1989 Sandbank published After Kafka: the Influence of Kafka's Fiction. Written in Israel and published in America, the title alone expresses an irony. There had never really been a Kafka era in Israel to influence the trajectory of literature. There had been a Kafka legacy started by Brod and it had ebbed. The ebb continued until the early 1990s. By that time, a major revival was underway among the Israeli intelligentsia. The fact that Kafka served as a prophet and divine guide for European philosophers and writers may have caused Israelis to feel that because he was Jewish, he might speak to them in an essential way. Gelber offers his own reasons for the Kafka revival in Israel in the 1990s:

2 Joseph Yerushalmi's bibliography was invaluable for this work. 3 Private conversation with Prof. Mark Gelber, Sept. 2, 2014.

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The War of Independence 1948, the Six Day War 1968, the Yom Kippur War 1973 and the Gulf War 1991, caused Israelis to experience a succession of national traumas. A homeland now existed. Zion had been reconstructed. Yet the promised light at the end of the dark tunnel of Jewish history was as evasive as ever. The hoped for spiritual fulfillment in the homeland was deferred… as is often the case in a Kafka text. The resurge of interest resulted in the second Kafka conference in Israel. Organized by several Israeli institutions and hosted by the Hebrew University and Ben Gurion University in 1991, the proceedings, edited by Mark Gelber were published as Kafka: Zionism and Beyond. In 2006, Gershon Shaked published Identity: Jewish Literatures in Foreign Languages (Hebrew) in which he took up once again the question that has perplexed Israelis for decades. What exactly is Kafka's relationship to Judaism and Israel? What kind of Jewish experience do Kafka's writings actually exemplify? His answer is that the writings are a paradigm, not of Judaism or Jewish literary creations but of the condition of Diaspora Jews – exiled, persecuted and doomed to wandering. My own studies on Franz Kafka conducted in Israel but published in New York, The Mystical Life of Franz Kafka: Theosophy, Cabala and the Modern Spiritual Revival, (Oxford 2012) have led me to believe that the mystical undertones in his writings have little to do with Judaism, Zionism, or Jewish mysticism. I base myself in part on Kafka's diary entries including one where he goes to visit the famous Theosophist Rudolph Steiner and confesses to being clairvoyant. I see the mystical undertones in his writings as coming from his own psychic states and exposure to spiritual streams and discourses within Prague. These include Theosophy, occult and Christianized cabalistic sources.

Kafka in Schools The low-keyed discussions in Israel concerning Kafka's Judaism, his Zionism, his universalism or, as I contend, his Christianized occultism continue. Yet the discussions take place primarily among scholars within university walls. All high school students I have asked are not familiar with him. Translations of Kafka are not on the approved list of texts for the matriculation exams in English Literature. The last time to my knowledge that the Matriculation exam in Hebrew literature had any questions on a Kafka text was in 2003. Although instructors in Israel have the freedom to teach a writer not on the matriculation exams, when I asked a sampling of literature teachers in high schools whether they have ever taught Kafka, all said they had not. Nor had they heard of any teacher who had. One teacher asked this question: "Franz Kafka? Was he a writer? Was he Jewish?" It is clear that Kafka in life and in death has had a difficult time establishing roots in Israel, beyond the confines of intellectual circles. Kafka-Atlas

Sources

Archives Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel which holds the historical newspapers Ha Poel ha Zair. Leah Goldberg Archive, Jewish National Library, Jerusalem. ARC. 4* 1655 02 28 Max Brod Archive, Jewish National Library, Jerusalem. Schwad 01 02 Letter to Rector #85 Shmuel Hugo Bergman Archive, Jewish National Library, Jerusalem

Publications - Almog, Oz. The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew: Oakland, CA, U of California Press, 2000) - Batumen, Elif. "Kafka's Last Trial," NY Times, Sept. 22, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/magazine/26kafka- t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (April 3, 2015) - Buber, Martin. "Guilt and Guilt Feelings" in Knowledge of Man. Buber, Martin. "Guilt and Guilt Feelings." The Knowledge of Man." New York: Harper & Row, 1965. - Converations about Schocken Books. Part I. http://www.archipelago.org/vol5- 2/karper.htm (April 3, 2015) - Diamant, Kathi. Kafka's Last Love. New York, Basic Books, 2003. Kafka: Exhibition. - Fiedler, Jeannine. Ed. Social Utopias of the 20s: Bauhaus, Kibbutz and Dream of the New Man. Germany: Müller and Busman Press, 1995. - Gelber, Mark.Ed. Kafka, Zionism and Beyond. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2004. - Grözinger, Karl Erich. Kafka and Kabbalah. Trans. Susan Hecker Ray. New York: Continuum, 1994. - Herman, David. "The Writer Still Shaping Israel's Identity." The Jewish Chronicle Online. http://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-features/102912/a-b-yehoshua- %E2%80%94-writer-still-shaping-israel%E2%80%99s-identity (April 3, 2015) - Horwitz, Rivka. “Kafka and the Crisis in Jewish Religious Thought.” Modern Judaism 15.1 (1995): 21-33. - Kafka, Franz. The Trial: a New Translation Based on the Restored Text. Trans. Breon Mitchell. New York: Schocken, 1998. - Klingsberg, Reuven. Ed. Exhibition Franz Kafka 1883-1924. Catalogue: Jerusalem: Jewish National and University Library, 1969. - Leavitt, June. The Mystical Life of Franz Kafka: Theosophy, Cabala and the Modern Spiritual Revival. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. - Moked, Gabriel. Kafka: Critical Essays on the Metamorphosis (Hebrew). Israel: Mehadir Publishing, 1956. Kafka-Atlas

- Sandbank, Shimon. After Kafka: The Influence of Kafka's Fiction. Athens, GA: U of Georgia Press, 1989. - Shaked, Gershon. Identity: Jewish Literature in Foreign Languages. (Hebrew) Israel: U of Haifa, 2006. - Weltsch, Felix, Franz Kafka: Religiosity and Humor in his Life and Works (Hebrew) Jerusalem: Bialik Insitute, 1959. - Yerushalmi, Joseph. Ed. Franz Kafka: Bibliography (Hebrew) Israel: U. of Haifa, 1975.

April 2015

About the author: June Leavitt is a freelance writer, lecturer and researcher. Her extensive work on spiritualist symbols and their effect on European literature resulted in Esoteric Symbols: The Tarot in Yeats, Eliot and Kafka, (University Press of America, 2007). Further research on Franz Kafka and the spiritualist milieu of early 20th century Europe are incorporated in her book The Mystical Life of Franz Kafka: Theosophy, Cabala and the Modern Spiritual Revival (Oxford 2012). Leavitt, who has lived in Israel for three decades, has a deep understanding of Zionism and the particular problems that Max Brod faced in attempting to root a Franz Kafka legacy in the historical Jewish homeland.