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Franz Kafka was commonly considered to be an assimilated
Jew, and, at face value, his writings have nothing to do with Judaism.
However, on closer examination, even though one would not necessarily look
upon Kafka as a religious writer, many Jewish ideas can be seen in his work.
Introduction
Franz Kafka was commonly considered to be an assimilated Jew, and, at face
value, his writings have nothing to do with Judaism. However, on closer
examination, even though one would not necessarily look upon Kafka as a
religious writer, many Jewish ideas can be seen in his work. "In
endlessly complex ways, nearly everything Kafka wrote turns on his relation to
Jews and to Jewish traditions." Perhaps his friendship with
Georg Langer who was heavily influenced by Chassidism - a movement which
stresses the mystical and anti-rational elements of Judaism - acted as a focal
point for his Jewish identity. Perhaps it was the pervasive anti-Semitism,
which he would have encountered in Prague during his early years, which was
the catalyst for his 'Jewish writing'. Whatever the case may be, mystical
impulses "still retain an enormous force in the books of Franz
Kafka." Kafka's writings, especially his unfinished works,
are not to be taken literally, and call for interpretation. It is this
interpretation which has been likened to Biblical exegesis. His closest friend
Max Brod "convinced several generations of scholars that his parables
were part of an elaborate quest for an unreachable God." One
can see a clear link between Kafka's writings and Jewish tradition,
particularly the mystical tradition in Judaism. In this essay, I will examine
the parallels between a text of the Merkavah stream of
mysticism (throne, or chariot, mysticism) and Kafka's story Before the Law,
as well as the similarities between the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel,
and Kafka's text The City Coat of Arms.
Merkava Mysticism and "Before the Law"
Mysticism: An introduction
Religious mysticism is an attempt to gain direct experience of, and, even
union with God. This is achieved not through an intellectual process of
studying canonical texts, but by mystical processes, which are not rational.
Thus, a mystic may attempt to achieve oneness with God through a process of
contemplation. The mystic may also attempt to interpret the words of the holy
texts, not on their face value, but on the assumption that they contain hidden
meanings. The mystic's aim is to uncover the true meaning of the text, which
is regarded as symbolical rather than a literal revelation of God's purpose.
And so, the mystic attempts to reveal God's true purpose, and in so doing,
come closer to, or even into direct contact with God.
Merkavah mysticism
The first phase of Jewish mysticism (from the first century
B.C.E. to the
tenth century C.E.) is known as merkavah mysticism. Most of the
works associated with this tradition were produced in the fifth and sixth
centuries. Already from the time of the Second Temple one can find esoteric
writings based on Ma'aseh Bereshit (the story of Creation) and
the book of Ezekiel. It is in Ezekiel that the imagery of the Divine throne as
a chariot (merkavah) is first mentioned. This chariot was drawn by four chayot
- living animals, each with four faces. This is the basis of the Jewish
mystical tradition which lasted until the beginning of the German chassidut
movement of the twelfth century. It is this imagery which serves as the
central motif of contemplation for the mystic. For followers of the Ma'aseh
Merkavah tradition, the animals in Ezekiel's vision were viewed as
angels. Although this mystical tradition is basically not followed today, much
of Jewish liturgy has its origins in this period. The kedushah of the
Amidah prayer, which is based on Isaiah Chapter 6, Verse 3, is the
best example of this. This mystical tradition stresses the transcendent
attributes of God, rather than his immanence. As is common with many
mystical movements, there were periods of backlash from the 'Orthodox'
establishment: "He who multiplies the praise of God to excess shall be
torn from the world."
Pirkei Heichalot
Pirkei Heichalot (The Chapters of the Chambers, or
Halls) serves as an excellent example of a Merkavah text. In the
seventeenth chapter of the text the reader discovers that Havayah (God)
"dwells in the seventh palace, in the innermost room thereof" on his
throne, or chariot. At the entrance to each of the seven palaces
stand eight guards - four to the left of the gate and four to the right. For
the soul to pass the guards without danger, it must possess magical 'seals',
which consist of secret names. These act as both a weapon and a defense
against demons and evil angels. The mystic also intones special hymns, which
enables him to reach a state of ecstasy, as he passes through the gates from
one palace to the next. One does not find a description of these guards, only
their names are mentioned. As each of their names ends with the suffix el
(God), the merkavah mystics conceived them as angels of God. The guards
who stand at the final gate are described vividly: "they stand angry and
war-like, strong, harsh, fearful, terrifying, taller than mountains and
sharper than peaks..." As the text continues, one finds
imagery of fierce and armed soldiers. Clearly, the guards are there to block
the way of the mystic who wishes to enter. Indeed, "the guards of the
sixth palace make a practice of killing those who "go and do not go down
on the Merkabah without permission. They hover over them, strike them, and
burn them."
The imagery presented in the text is quite frightening. The central
metaphor which permeates the text is that of the omnipotence of God and the
dangers and difficulties of trying to reach Him. It appears strange, to say
the least, that such an all-powerful God requires the protection of fifty-six
guards, the final eight of whom are described in the most frightening terms.
There are a number of possible explanations for the appearance of the guards
in the text. The first is that the guards are not, in fact, protecting God
Himself, but rather, that they are protecting the Jewish mystic who attempts
to reach God, who resides in the innermost chamber of the seventh palace. For
it is clear that the mystic stands in great danger, as can be ascertained from
a study of the story 'Arba'a Nichnesu LePardes', which is found in
the Talmudic tractate of Hagigah. It recounts the story of four
rabbis who try to enter 'Paradise,' three of whom end up by losing their
lives. A second possible explanation of this parable is that man lives in an
inherently hostile and dangerous world, one which is filled with barriers and
obstacles, as symbolized by the guards, which stand in the way of God and the
human soul. The text teaches us that our role is to persevere and surmount
these obstacles in order to reach God. It acts as a test, challenging the will
and commitment of the mystic to ultimately reach God. Alternatively, the
existence of the guards, especially the fierce ones which appear in the final
verse of the chapter, is a statement about the existence of evil in the world.
To reach God, man must vanquish the evil in the world as represented by the
guards. The fact that the guards become fiercer and crueler the closer that
man gets to God (as he approaches the seventh palace) emphasizes the
difficulty and dangers of the quest. The closer that the human soul gets to
God the more difficult the quest to ultimately reach God actually becomes.
Before the Law
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There are similarities between the Merkava text which we
have examined and the Kafka parable Before the Law. In the Kafka text
the reader finds a man who "prays for admittance to the Law."
The doorkeeper who stands at the entrance refuses him entry. He tells the man
that even if he were to pass this gate, many more halls exist which are
guarded by gatekeepers "each more powerful than the last."
The man is perturbed by the inaccessibility of the Law, but does not disobey
the doorkeeper. He takes his place on a chair for many years, engages in
discourse with the doorkeeper, yet his attempts to enter the gate are always
rebuffed. Finally, before his death, he asks the gatekeeper why nobody else
has requested to enter the gate. The gatekeeper replies: "No one else
could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now
going to shut it."
A comparative view
While the Law is not defined by Kafka, it has obvious parallels with the
Bible, the source of all Jewish Law. Just as the goal of the Jewish mystic is
to reach God, so does Kafka's character hold a need to achieve a knowledge of
the Law. However, while Jewish belief suggests that the goal of attaining a
greater understanding of God is achievable, Kafka seems to believe that the
attempt is futile. Thus, in the Merkava text, the obstacles standing
between man and God are there to be overcome and are capable of being
overcome. In contrast, Kafka's character, while having a need to know the Law,
seems to be overcome by a complete sense of passivity in pursuing this goal.
He obediently accepts the doorkeeper's refusal to admit him to the Law until
he eventually dies. Kafka seems to be saying that while man apparently has an
overwhelming need to find meaning in the world, his quest for meaning is
doomed from the outset, and there is hardly any point in even beginning the
quest. In this sense Jewish mysticism has an inherently more optimistic view
of life and man's relationship with God than Kafka.
There are also interesting similarities in the use of literary devices and
language in the Merkava text and Kafka. The second sentence of Before
the Law begins: "To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the
country..." The term 'man from the country' in the original
German in which the text was written is mann von lande, which means
'man from the land'. If one were to translate this German term into Hebrew, it
would read as am haArets (literally, 'man of the land'). In
religious terminology, am haAretz refers to 'everyman'. Kafka
is therefore suggesting that his story does not merely concern the experience
of a particular individual, but has universal significance, just as the
Merkava text finds divine meaning in a simple story.
There is also a similarity in the imagery that is used in both texts. The
'doorkeeper' in the Kafka text is clearly a parallel to the guards in the
Merkava mystical text. The imagery of the strong and powerful guards who stand
at the gate of the seventh palace in the mystical text serves as a reminder of
the fear evoked in the Kafka character when he looks closely at the doorkeeper
with "his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar
beard." Both the Merkava text and Kafka seem to be saying
that any attempt to approach the source of ultimate wisdom, whether it is God
or 'the Law', is bound to be a terrifying and fearful experience.
As noted, Kafka does not describe the content of The Law, which is guarded
by the gatekeeper. It may represent a general religious belief in a
metaphysical being or a belief in a traditional type of God. The Merkava text
clearly refers to God in the traditional Jewish sense. This is the God of
Israel and the Jewish people. The traditional Jewish belief holds that
Revelation and Redemption has the same meaning for all Jews and that the Jews
are a collectivity. In contrast to this, the message which one derives from
reading Before the Law is that Kafka believes that man is alone in the
world and must deal with religion in his own way, and according to his own
conscience. The quest for meaning is an experience unique to each individual.
As implied in the Kafka story, each person has his own gate to the Law and no
person can gain access to the Law through somebody else's gate. Once again one
can see the pessimism is the Kafka piece. Redemption appears to be
unattainable. After waiting patiently and passively for the doorkeeper to open
'his gate' to the Law without result, the gatekeeper, when the Kafka character
is about to die, shuts 'his gate'. This suggests that not only is knowledge of
the Law, but also redemption itself, is unattainable. Man will continue to
try, yet his efforts are doomed to fail.
The Tower of Babel and The City Coat of Arms
The Tower of Babel
The Biblical story of the Tower of Babel is related in the book of Genesis.
According to the aggadic midrash, six hundred thousand men, under the command
of Nimrod, began to build a tower in order to reach the heavens and raise a
rebellion against God. The midrash tells us that there were three types of
builders: the first group wished to engage in war with the deity, the second
were pagans who wished to set up idols to worship, and the third wished to
"ascend into the heavens, and ruin them with... bows and spears."
The story recounts that so intent were the builders on their goal that they
placed greater value on the building process than on basic human values. The
midrash relates that the loss of a single brick - but not that of a human life
- was the cause of great grief amongst the builders. When the arrows which the
workers shot towards heaven returned to them bloodied, they believed
that they had slain the deity. At this point, God said to His angels
"Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may
not understand one another's speech." Many killed their
friend in frustration at the lack of communication. For others, their
punishment was meted out by God. The first group of builders were scattered
across the earth, the second were turned into apes and phantoms and God set
the third group against each other, in order that they be killed. The midrash
concludes by telling us that a third of the tower sank into the ground, a
third was burned and the final third remained standing.
The City Coat of Arms: A comparative view
The Biblical story of Babel begins as follows: "And the whole earth
was of one language and of one speech." These words imply
that from the beginning mankind lived together in harmony and purity. This was
achieved through the unity which they held by speaking the same language and
sharing the same goals. The Kafka text, however, begins very differently:
"At first all the arrangements for the building of The Tower of Babel
were characterized by fairly good order; indeed the order was perhaps too
perfect." As opposed to the Biblical text, the beginning of The
City Coat of Arms gives the reader a sense of the disharmony and impurity
from which mankind suffers. The 'guides and interpreters' indicate the
existence of a language barrier which is complicated by the fact that man was
following too strict and rigid a plan.
The second difference, when examining the Two
texts, is in the outcome. At
the end of the Biblical story of Babel, the builders' endeavors end in
absolute defeat; according to the Biblical text they cannot communicate and
therefore cannot work together, and the midrash tells us that many of them
were killed. This is not the case in The City Coat of Arms. In this
story, the builders are merely sidetracked from their cause for "the
idea... can never vanish again; so long as there are men on the earth there
will be also the irresistible desire to complete the building."
Both texts begin with the people working together in pursuit of something
constructive. Yet, whereas in the Bible the story ends with the destruction of
the tower and the punishment of the builders, in Kafka's story there is a an
implicit understanding that the whole city needed to be destroyed in order to
bring redemption. The story concludes: "All the legends and songs that
came to birth in that city are filled with longing for a prophesied day when
the city would be destroyed by five successive blows from a gigantic fist. It
is for that reason too that the city has a closed fist on its coat of
arms." From a Jewish viewpoint the gigantic fist represents
the imagery of the zroah netuyah (outstretched arm) with which God
redeemed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Continuing with the theme of
Redemption, we can view the destruction of the city by the gigantic fist to
represent ultimate Messianic Redemption. In the Kafka text destruction
represents freedom from the disorder and disintegration of society. There
exists a religious view that widespread destruction will precede the coming of
the Messiah. This view has its basis in the writings of the Prophets. For
example: "For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and
the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women raped; and half
the city shall go into exile..." Here, one can see a link
between the theme of destruction and Redemption in the City Coat of Arms
and traditional religious views.
The view of history which the reader finds in The City Coat of Arms
differs starkly from that which forms the basis of Orthodox Jewish belief.
Kafka writes:
Human knowledge is increasing, the art of building has
made progress, a piece of work which takes us a year may perhaps be
done in half the time in another hundred years, and better done, too,
more enduringly... It is far more likely that the next generation with
their perfected knowledge will find the work of their predecessors
bad, and tear down what has been built so as to build anew.
According to this view, civilization and technology progress with each
generation. Within history, each succeeding generation is at a higher level
than the preceding generation and the present generation is higher than past
generations. However, one must realize that Kafka is not referring to the
moral qualities of mankind. On the other hand, Jewish tradition places great
emphasis on the moral issue. Also, according to tradition, Judaism views
history within the context of a belief in yeridat haDorot ('a decline
in generations'). This notion holds that as time passes from Revelation at
Sinai, the holiness of each generation declines, and with this decline, their
ability to make changes to the law decreases. "Since the chain of
tradition stretches back to the revelation at Sinai, the further back in time
a source goes, the greater legal authority attributed to that source. This
means that the Amoraim cannot reject a ruling of the sages of the
Mishnah." This is a fundamental precept of traditional
Rabbinic belief.
Conclusion
Although Franz Kafka is commonly considered to have been a completely
assimilated Jew, his works can be seen as incorporating and reinterpreting
many Jewish religious themes. One must understand that Kafka had a positive
relationship vis-à-vis his Judaism - it was not one of rejection or apathy.
He had a strong Jewish identity, albeit a highly troubled one, and in his
writings one can see a Jewish influence: "For all his uneasiness with
Judaism, [Kafka] seemed the Jewish writer, more than any other since the
Hebrew Bible." Whether Kafka wrote as a Jew because of the
influence of Chassidism or Czech-German anti-Semitism remains unknown.
Whatever the case, even though one can initially read Kafka outside the
context of Jewish or religious thought, it is clear that there exists an
undeniable link between Kafka and Judaism, especially Jewish mysticism.
Bibliography
• Bible.
• Bloom, H., "Kafka: Canonical Patience and
"Indestructibility" in Bloom, H., The Western Canon, Harcourt
Brace, New York, 1994.
• Crumb, R. and Mairowitz, D. Z., Kafka For Beginners, Icon Books
and Allen and Unwin, Cambridge and Sydney, 1993.
• Ginzberg, L., Legends of the Bible, The Jewish Publication
Society of America, Philadelphia, 1975.
• Gray, R., Franz Kafka, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1973.
• Kafka, F., "Before the Law" in Kafka, F., The Complete
Short Stories, Minerva, London, 1992, pp. 3-4.
• _______, "The City Coat of Arms" in Kafka, F., The
Complete Short Stories, Minerva, London, 1992, pp. 433-4.
• Pirkei Heichalot (The Chapters of the Halls, or Chambers),
selected chapters.
• Scholem, G. G., Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Thames and
Hudson, London, 1955.
• Tamari, M., "With All Your Possessions": Jewish Ethics and
Economic Life, Free Press, New York, 1987, p. 16.
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