Kafka, Zionism, and Beyond

This volume contains the lectures delivered at an international conference in Israel devoted to the topic of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) and Zionism. Kafka's interests in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Jewish Nationalism and his various relationships to his Zionist friends and his participation in Jewish national and Zionist-related activity are explored from a number of different critical vantage points. Likewise, his writings are considered within the specific framework of Jewish nationalism and Zionism.

Résumé

This book-series, initiated in 1992, has an interdisciplinary orientation; it is published in English and German and comprises research monographs, collections of essays and editions of source texts dealing with German-Jewish literary and cultural history, in particular from the period covering the 18th to 20th centuries.

The closer definition of the term German-Jewish applied to literature and culture is an integral part of its historical development. Primarily, the decisive factor is that from the middle of the 18th century German gradually became the language of choice for Jews, and Jewish authors started writing in German, rather than Yiddish or Hebrew, even when they were articulating Jewish themes. This process is directly connected an historical change in mentality and social factors which led to a gradual opening towards a non-Jewish environment, which in its turn was becoming more open. In the Enlightenment, German society becomes the standard of reference initially for an intellectual elite. Against this background, the term German-Jewish literature refers to the literary work of Jewish authors writing in German to the extent that explicit or implicit Jewish themes, motifs, modes of thought or models can be identified in them.
From the beginning of the 19th century at the latest, however, the image of Jews in the work of non-Jewish writers, determined mainly by anti-Semitism, becomes a factor in German-Jewish literature. There is a tension between Jewish writers' authentic reference to Jewish traditions or existence and the anti-Semitic marking and discrimination against everything Jewish which determines the overall development of the history of German-Jewish literature and culture. This series provides an appropriate forum for research into the whole problematic area.

Contenu

Contents: Scott Spector, Prague Zionisms between the Nations. - Niels Bokhove, Kafka's Personal Zionism. - Hans-Richard Eyl, Kafka's State of Mind and the Making of the Jewish State. - Andreas B. Kilcher, Franz Kafka und Anton Kuh. - Vivian Liska, Nachbarn, Feinde und andere Gemeinschaften. - Iris Bruce, Jewish Education: Borderline and Counterdiscourses in Kafka. - Gabriel Moked, Kafka's Gnostic Existentialism and Modern Jewish Revival. - Eveline Goodman-Thau, Metamorphosis as Messianic Myth: Dream and Reality in the Writings of Franz Kafka. - Delphine Bechtel, Kafka, the >Ostjuden<, and the Inscription of Identity. - David A. Brenner, Kafka, Judaism, and Homoeroticism. - Benno Wagner, Kafka und der »Judenstaat«. - Gershon Shaked, Kafka and Agnon. - Alfred Bodenheimer, Kafka's Hebrew Notebooks. - Mark H. Gelber, The Image of Kafka in Brod's »Zauberreich der Liebe« and its Zionist Implications. - Ritchie Robertson, The Creative Dialogue between Kafka and Brod. - Shimon Sandbank, Lot's Wife, Kafka, Blanchot. - Mark M. Anderson, Virtual Zion: The Promised Lands of the Kafka Critical Editions.