Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was born in Prague, today the capital of the Czech Republic and then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents were middle-class Ashkenazi Jews. His father, Hermann Kafka, emigrated from Ozek, a Czech town with a significant Jewish population. Although Franz’s parents spoke the western dialect of Yiddish, pejoratively called Mauscheldeutsch, the “Moses German,” they eventually substituted it with German and Czech.

His parents were not very observant Jews and attended synagogue only on major holidays and celebrated the Passover Seder at home only. The limited Jewish education Franz received ended when he celebrated his bar mitzvah. Kafka completed his primary education in 1893 at an all-boys German school and attended high school at the Imperial Secondary School located in the Kinsky Palace on Old Town Square. In 1901, he entered the University of Prague, where, urged by his father, he completed his law degree in 1906. It was there that he met Max Brod, who became his closest friend throughout his life. In 1908, he began working in the legal department of an insurance company, a position that also allowed him to write.

The tense relationship he always had with his father shaped his almost nonexistent Jewish identity in his youth. In “Letter to His Father,” he wrote: “Judaism hasn’t saved me from you either. In itself, on that ground, it would have been possible to conceive of salvation, but even more so, it would have been possible to conceive that in Judaism we would both find ourselves, or, even more, emerge from it together. But what kind of Judaism did you bequeath to me! As a child, I, like you, reproached myself for not attending the temple regularly enough, for not fasting, etc. I didn’t believe I was doing myself any injustice, but rather an injustice to you, and my ever-vigilant conscience tormented me. You went to the temple four days a year; there you were, at best, closer to the indifferent than to those who took things seriously; you performed the prayers as a matter of formality, … and, furthermore, as long as I was in the temple—that was the main thing—I could slip away wherever I wanted.”

Kafka was influenced not only by his relationship with his father, but also by the antisemitism of the Czechs. In 1897 and 1920, he witnessed two violent pogroms and saw how the authorities had to protect the Jewish population. But in 1911, his attitude toward all things Jewish began to change when he met Yitzhak Lowy, a Yiddish theater actor. He liked his performances so much that he attended every one of them that year. He soon became interested in Jewish mysticism and religion, and especially in Zionism. His contact with this group of Jewish actors was like a conversion to Judaism. It was then that he met Dora Diamant, a Jewish girl from a Hasidic family, who became the love he had always yearned for. However, his plan to emigrate to the Land of Israel with Dora was thwarted in 1917 when he suffered the first symptoms of tuberculosis. Before his death in 1924, he asked his friend Max Brod to burn all his writings. Fortunately for everyone, he ignored him. Today, the term «Kafkaesque» is applied to situations that are very complex, bizarre, or illogical. Franz Kafka undoubtedly had a «Kafkaesque» Jewish identity.

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: Walter H. Sokel «Kafka as a Jew,» Encyclopaedia Judaica, and other sources.