Kafka and kabbalah

by Karl-Erich Grözinger

Is a study of Kafka's thinking and writing from strictly a religious point of view justified? He is, after all, considered one of the pillars of modernism. As such, Kafka's well-established deploring of the inadequacy of his own Jewish upbringing only fuels the generally held belief that he was not much influenced by his religion. Or does it? This compelling book considers the writer from a very different point of view. In jargon-free language, Judaist Karl Erich Grozinger reveals that Kafka actually had an extraordinarily detailed and sophisticated knowledge of Judaismparticularly of the Kabbalah and kabbalistic tradition. Working from the earlier critical writings of Gershom Scholem, Professor Grozinger shows that these influences can be found in all of Kafka's texts: his novels and short stories; but, especially, in his diary entries and aphorisms. In fact, the essence of what we have come to call Kafkaesque has its origins and foundations primarily in the Kabbalah. This ranges from