The Animal in the Synagogue: Franz Kafka's Jewishness

(Hardback)

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The Animal in the Synagogue explores Franz Kafkas sense of being a Jew in the modern world and its literary and linguistic ramifications. It falls into two parts. The first is organized around the theme of Kafkas complex and often self-derogatory understanding and assessment of his own Jewishness and of the place the modern Jew occupies in the abyss of the world (Martin Buber). That part is based on a close reading of Kafkas correspondence with his Czech lover, Milena Jesenska, and on a meticulous analysis, thematic, stylistic, and structural, of Kafkas only short story touching openly and directly upon Jewish social and ritual issues, and known as In Our Synagogue (the titlenot by the author). In both the letters and the short story images of small animalsrepulsive, dirty, or otherwise objectionableare used by Kafka as means of exploring his own manhood and the Jewish tradition at large as he understood it. The second part of the book focuses on Kafkas place within the complex of Jewish writing of his time in all its three linguistic forms: Hebrew writing (essentially Zionist), Yiddish writing (essentially nationalistic but not committed to Zionism), and the writing, like his, in non-Jewish languages (mainly German) and within the non-Jewish religious and artistic traditions which inhered in them. The essay deals in detail with Kafkas responses to contemporary Jewish literatures, and his pessimistic evaluation of those literatures potential. Essentially, Kafka doubted the sheer possibility of a genuine and culturally tenable compromise (let alone synthesis) between Jewishness and modernity. The book deals with topics and some texts that the flourishing, ever expanding Kafka scholarship has either neglected or misunderstood because most scholars had no real background in either Hebrew or Yiddish studies, and were unable to grasp the nuances and subtle intentions in Kafkas attitudes toward modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature and their paragons, such as the major Zionist Hebrew poet H.N. Bialik or the Yiddish master Sholem Aleichem.

Reviews

This excellent book offers a bright discussion of Kafka's being-Jewish, revealing the complexities of his life and letters as a German-Jewish authordealing with "Kafka's impossibilities", illuminating the poetical and political aspects of his animal-writings, engaging so well his wit and darkness. -- Galili Shahar, Tel Aviv University
There is no dispute that Dan Miron is the most important scholar and critic of the 20th and the 21st century of Jewish literature as it materializes in Hebrew, Yiddish and German. From a birds view at the richness, the wisdom and the brilliance of his scholarship his new book, The Animal in the Synagogue: Franz Kafka's Jewishness, shines as the pinnacle of a scholarly project, the pillars of which Miron planted dozens of years ago. His courage and his scholarly greatness can be defined by his critique of the axiom that Jewish literature should be judged against the Zionist achievement of the establishment of Jewish sovereignty based on national territorialization. True to his personal and political pact with Modern Jewish literature, the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish nation was an option that as a Zionist he tied his life with. But his obligation to Jewish literature, in Hebrew and in other tongues, is clear-eyed and never blurs his rigorous stance as a philologist and as a historian. Well-versed in each and every detail of the vast spaces of Jewish literatures he turns now to tackle the Jewishness of Kafkas oeuvre as part of the enormous variety and the richness of Jewish literatures while resisting their reduction. Thus, in a brilliant discussion of the Modern Jewish literary context, he studies the way in which literature expresses Kafkas Jewishness. -- Hannan Hever, Yale University
Dan Miron combines huge erudition with interpretive courage that reminds what humanist interpretation should be about. Miron provides us with a deep, insightful, and inspiring reading of Kafka. Miron takes the reader on a courageous and convoluted literary and philosophical journey. A significant, imaginative, unique and bewildering journey, in which a Jewish version of the Nietzschean image of dancing upon the abyss is performed perfectly both by Miron and his hero. -- Shoshana Ronen, University of Warsaw

Author Bio

Dan Miron is Leonard Kaye Professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at Columbia University.