Dr. Aviad Stolman, curator of the Jewish collection at the National Library in Jerusalem writes about the letter that dealt with Kafka's fear of mice, a fear that found support in a Talmudic story.
In December 2012, the German Literature Archive in Merbach bought for 100 euros a rare letter from 1917 by the Czech writer Franz Kafka, which was offered for auction in Germany. Apparently, the letter was formerly part of the estate of Max Brod, a friend of Kafka's, which recently a court ruled that it should be transferred to the National Library in Jerusalem.
Dr. Aviad Stolman, curator of the Jewish collection at the National Library in Jerusalem writes about the letter that dealt with Kafka's fear of mice, a fear that found support in a Talmudic story.
"I would tell the Talmudic story in a different way"
By Dr. Aviad Stolman
As part of the legal proceedings between the National Library and the daughters of the late Esther Hoffa, I was asked more than once, by media from Israel and abroad, why the National Library finds interest in Kafka's archive, and in particular, why we consider it part of the Jewish collection. Well, less than two weeks ago the German National Literary Archive acquired a single letter written by Franz Kafka to his friend Max Brod (Ofer Adret, "A rare letter in which Kafka reveals his fear of mice was bought by Germany", Haaretz, 08.12.2012). The four-page letter, taken from Brod's personal estate which belongs to the National Library according to his will, was purchased for a legendary sum: 96,000 euros. I believe that a perusal of the contents of this letter, written in German, is able to provide an answer to this intriguing question: was there anything Jewish in Franz Kafka's writing.
The letter in question in which Kafka revealed his fear of mice aroused great interest, but with all due respect, musophobia is one of the most common fears among humans. What is much more interesting is the fact that the letter contains a fascinating reference by Kafka to a Talmudic text. Despite the fact that the letter was published about half a jubilee years ago, it seems that its readers never noticed, not even those who drafted the press release on behalf of the German archive that acquired it, that at the end of the letter there is a revised and original wording of a Talmudic legend midrash. Kafka's formulation indicates not only a good familiarity with the Talmudic text, but also a deep understanding of it.
The Talmudic legend midrash that Kafka referred to in his letter to Brod seeks to express the idea that after a failed moral struggle, the pain is great. Looking back, the person realizes that with a slight effort he was able to overcome and meet the challenge. This deep psychological insight is attributed in the Babylonian Talmud to Rabbi Yehuda: "In the future, the Holy One, blessed be He, will bring the creation of evil and slaughter them before the righteous and before the wicked. The righteous seem to them like a high mountain, and the wicked seem to them like a strand of hair; All these praise and praises all praise: righteous people praise and say: How could we conquer such a high mountain? And the wicked prepare and say: How could we not conquer this strand of hair?!" (Sukkah Neb XNUMX).
Rabbi Yehuda's surprising position is that even those who managed to withstand the moral confrontation cry. Why would the one who succeeded and defeated the difficulty cry? To this Rashi replied in his commentary: "Let them remember the sorrow they had to conquer this evil in their lives." In Rashi's opinion, remembering the difficulty and sorrow that resulted from the moral confrontation, causes those righteous people to cry. Like a person who remembers the trauma that happened to him in his dark days and cries, so do the righteous cry, remembering "the sorrow they had for conquering this evil". It is understood that this interpretation is not without difficulties, since the sorrow has passed, and it could be expected that the consciousness of success and the intoxication of victory will make the person happy. The one who finished a grueling course, is he happy or crying?
At the end of Kafka's letter, which refers to the impression left on him by Brod's last letters, one can find an interesting confrontation with the difficulty of interpreting Rashi. Kafka and Brod corresponded almost daily, and one was aware of the other's moods, and Kafka's comment: "By the way: You don't howl every moment", should be read in this context. Hence, in the form of the Kafka-Talmudic association, Kafka expressed something about wailing and weeping: "I would tell the Talmudic story in a different way: the righteous weep, because behind them great suffering, so they believed, and now they see that it was nothing compared to their current situation. But the wicked: are there any like that?" According to Kafka, the righteous cry not because of the suffering they have gone through, but because of the present suffering that surrounds them!
What is that present suffering? It is possible that in his words, Kafka is referring to another Talmudic article attributed to Rabbi Levi, which appears on the last page of the Tractate of Blessings (Sad XNUMXA, here according to the Oxford manuscript): "The wise men have no rest for the future to come." The tzaddik's struggle is unceasing, and the degree of difficulty it poses, "from yeshiva to yeshiva, and from midrash to midrash" (Rashi), and with it the suffering, steadily increases. In my opinion, Kafka's assertion regarding the wicked, "There are none like them", did not stem from excessive optimism, but rather from the anguish and struggles, and the Sisyphean struggle that was his lot. Kafka's interpretation, perhaps following Rashi, recalls the well-known anecdote about Albert Einstein, who replied to a girl who had difficulty with mathematics: "Don't be worried about your difficulties in mathematics - I assure you that mine are greater."
This is not the only time that Kafka referred to the Talmud in his writings, and this is not surprising, in light of Kafka's exposure to Talmudic-midrashic literature. Six years before writing this letter to Brod, Kafka mentioned in his personal diary (Yoman, October 5, 1911) the Talmudic rhythm to which he was exposed. At the end of the XNUMXs, the student Aharon Appelfeld participated in a club in a house that hosted Max Broad. Brod argued to those present that Kafka was a Jewish writer not only because his parents and friends were Jewish, and not even because he had a deep affinity for poetry and theater in Yiddish, Hebrew and Jewish dialects. In Brod's opinion, the essence of Kafka's work is Jewish: "Who is he who is accused of no wrongdoing, moving and moving between the courts gripped by anxiety and sorrow, who if not the persecuted Jew" (Yud Hayom Gedol, Jerusalem XNUMX), the author Applefeld quoted Brod, Kafka's close friend.
