States of Exile

Laurent Cohen has an interesting article on Jewish self-hatred in Eretz Acheret: According to Lessing, Jewish self-hatred stems from two chief sources: Jewish internalization of antisemitism and the Jews' ethical-megalomaniac aspiration to redeem the world. "Ethical-megalomaniac" - a nice turn of phrase. Then we have Kafka: If Kafka became so closely drawn to his Judaism, is there any point in further discussion about his “self-hatred?” The answer is yes. His letters, stories and personal diaries bear witness to the fact that he viewed himself as a person without any hope of salvation. He unremittingly despised the fatal flaw that the “exile of the soul” had imprinted on him. “The fear of life,” the camouflage, the schism – all these characteristics were etched into his spirit. Let us conclude by noting that Kafka never deluded himself. He summed up his effort to study Judaism and thereby acquire for himself a new identity quite pessimistically: “It is like chasing a dre...

You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. – Franz Kafka, "Senses" The room Kafka refers to has been called Kodesh Hakodashim , sanctum sanctorum and Holy of Holies. Every exile carries it with him.

Frequently people fall in the street and lie there dead. Whereupon all the shop people open their doors laden with wares, then the chatter begins: "Good morning,--it's a dull day--I'm selling any amount of kerchiefs--ah yes, the war." I rush into the house . . . I finally knock on the janitor's window: "Good morning," I say, "I understand a dead man was carried in here just now. Would you be kind of enough to let me see him?" . . . "Out with you!" he shouts. "This riffraff is getting in the habit of snooping about here every day. There's no dead man here. Maybe next door." I raise my hat and go. - Franz Kafka, "Description of a Struggle" Kafka was a Gnostic and a Jew. Integral to both is the command to remember. Only anamnesis can save us from the constant, contextless present of modernity. There is a certain nobility to being a man among the ruins; there is no nobility to being a man among the ruins who forget...