Kafka was born a Jew and remained a Jew all his life, although he frequently tried to play down Judaism's influence on him. "What do I have in common with the Jews?" he asked in his diary. "I don't have anything in common with myself, and would be content to stand quietly alone in a corner, satisfied that I can breathe." Nevertheless, his friends were almost all Jewish, as were all but a couple of his girlfriends. Judaism plays a key though usually hidden role in many of his stories, such as in "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk," the "mouse folk" presumably being the Jews, who are depicted as widely scattered, hard-working, facing great dangers they always manage to overcome, and, interestingly, unartistic.
The situation for Jews in Bohemia at the turn of the century seems to have been one of somewhat suspicious tolerance most of the time, with exceptions such as the 1899 anti-Semitic riots in Prague, which wiped out many stores owned by Jewish shopkeepers. Kafka's father, who himself owned a shop, had registered his family as Czech nationals, and so escaped destruction. Jews were resented by the Czech-speaking majority as being part of the German-speaking elite, who made up a bit less than 10% of the population in Prague, yet had most of the power, wealth and prestige. In point of fact, better than half of the German-speaking population in Prague was in fact Jewish, although they mostly belonged to the middle, not the upper classes. The German elites in power in the Austro-Hungarian Empire also distrusted the Jews, one reason being that their political views tended to be more liberal than the German nationalism favored by the elites. And of course the insidious stereotypes of the Jews as shifty, conniving, physically weak, money-grubbing, etc., etc. were still widely held by most—so insidious that even some of the Jews themselves began to believe they were true.
For centuries Jews had been living in the old ghetto in Prague, the Josefstadt, which had been one of the most important in Europe. By the 19th century most German Jews had decided to assimilate themselves to the prevailing culture around them, hoping that in this way they would no longer be seen as "outsiders" and hence would gain rights traditionally denied to them. They dropped the old clothes, the "exotic" behaviors, and the use of Yiddish. This proved successful in gaining them emancipation, which was completed in 1860, but along the way much of the centuries-old heritage and traditions were lost. Eastern Jews, the Ostjuden, living in countries like Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and other Eastern European nations did not try to assimilate, holding on to their old ways, and the leaders of their more "civilized" Jewish neighbors in Germany and Austria-Hungary considered them almost an embarassment. They wanted to steer clear of any reminder of their "barbaric" past, such as Hasidism. On the other hand, there was also an interest in the old ways shown by much of the population, and novels of ghetto life were very popular, as was the Yiddish theater.
Kafka was drawn to the Yiddish theater after a traveling troupe arrived in Prague in late 1911. He would sit transfixed by the admittedly sometimes schmaltzy plays and write about them extensively in his diary. He became very close friends with one of the actors, Isaac Löwy, "whom I would admire in the dust," who spent hours telling him about his childhood and young adulthood in Poland (then under the control of Russia). Franz became so enamored of the theater that on February 18, 1912 he gave a lecture called "Speech on the Yiddish tongue," described as an "elegant and charming lecture delivered by Dr. Kafka" in the Prague Jewish newspaper. Franz's father was less than impressed with his son's newfound interest in the old ways. Hermann Kafka had escaped a poor Jewish upbringing in the town of Wossek, about fifty miles southwest of Prague, and had made a name for himself with his successful store. He had been thoroughly assimilated, registering as a Czech national and giving his children German, not Jewish names, and looked askance at his son's fascination with what he considered "backward" and something to be discarded without a second thought. Franz brings this up for a lengthy discussion in the "Letter to His Father," complaining that what was left over of Judaism after the assimilation was an "insufficient scrap...a mere nothing, a joke—not even a joke," and that "precisely the getting rid of it seemed to me to be the devoutest action."
This "insufficient scrap" had consisted of attending temple services four times a year with his father as a child ("I don't think I was ever again so bored, except later at dancing lessons") , the first Seder meal, which degenerated into "a farce," and of course his bar mitzvah, held on June 13, 1896. The almost 13-year old boy experienced much nerve-wracking anticipation, but it turned out to be simply a matter of memorizing a couple of speeches and then a party afterward. However, on his mother's side there was a tradition of strength, learning, and discipline. "In Hebrew my name is Amschel, like my mother's maternal grandfather," who was "a very pious and learned man." There was also his mother's great-grandfather, even more learned and "held in equal honor by Jews and Christians."
The tradition of Talmudic discussion and debate has been for centuries an integral part of Jewish intellectual life, and this had some influence as well on Franz. The ninth chapter of The Trial, "In the Cathedral," is a virtuoso demonstration of such discussion, even though it takes place between a priest and Joseph K., the man arrested for no discernable reason trying to get to the bottom of the situation. It starts with the priest telling the "Before the Law" parable, and continues over several pages, with the priest and K. discussing the finer points of the story. Mention is frequently made of "scholars" who have been studying the parable, just as rabbis would study the Torah, the old Law, and appeal to it in their debates, so too do the scholars try to tease out every drop of meaning in the new Scriptures, the new Law, in this case the Law of the Court. But in both cases there is so much to be made of the writings that the potential for new and different interpretations is infinite.
Although there is much of a Jewish sensibility in Kafka's works, there is also a sense of universalism as well. When religion is directly mentioned it's almost never Judaism being discussed but Christianity. For instance, the Samsa family from The Metamorphosis is quite definitely Christian, praying to the saints, and crossing themselves, and the maid at the end of "The Judgment" buries her face in her apron and cries out, "Jesus!" Also, the tradition of the "wandering Jew" is utilized in the wanderings of K. in The Castle, although in a secularized, more universal way. It could be that Kafka simply wished that his work be more inclusive as opposed to being exclusively Jewish in nature. The feelings of alienation, being an outsider, and knowing that your life is subject to forces beyond your control, as well as a sense of dogged survival, frequently associated with the Jewish sensibility and which all frequently crop up in Kafka's work would prove to be among the most widespread and common feelings among people of all religions and races in the uncertain 20th century. In a very real sense, Jewish sentiments have been made universal, and Kafka speaks to these feelings from the perspective of both a Jew and as a member of humanity in general.
Later in life, Kafka became intensely interested in Zionism and other things relating to Judaism. For a time he was interested in the Kaabalah and mysticism, and tried his hand at learning Hebrew. For a while he had the daydream of going to Palestine and open a restaurant with his last girlfriend, Dora Diamant, the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi and quite learned herself in Hebrew and Judaism. Nothing would come of this, of course, but he saw Palestine as a refuge, even if only a mental one for him.
Kafka's own beliefs are a matter of conjecture. When he was a boy one of his friends argued for the existence of God from design, that having a world without a God to create it was like a watch without a watchmaker. Kafka refuted this argument forcefully, and he seemed to be quite proud of this accomplishment. As a student, he went so far as to declare himself an atheist, and as an adult, he rarely went to temple and was definitely not a practicing Jew, even though elements of the culture interested him so strongly. On the other hand, as shown in the Blue Octavo Notebooks, he was quite interested by metaphysical questions of sin, Truth, and ultimate reality, writing intriguingly, "There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution." Elaborating further, he went on, "The fact that there is nothing but a spiritual world deprives us of hope and gives us certainty." Many commentators, most notably his best friend and biographer Max Brod, who was himself quite devout, see Kafka as a religious writer, holding, for example, that the object of K.'s quest, the Castle, is in fact God or divine love or eternal life. Whether this interpretation is justified or not has been fiercely debated, but it says a lot about Kafka's sensibility that his works can be read in this way, even though they frequently seem completely bereft of hope of any kind, much less hope in a transcendent, religious sense.
The Jewish presence in Prague was suddenly almost totally wiped out after the takeover in March 1939 of Czechloslovakia by the Nazis, who hated Czechs and all Slavs as well as Jews. In the space of about six years the Jewish population in Prague was literally decimated, dwindling from a bustling community of 100,000 to the less than 10,000 living there today. Hitler planned to make the Prague ghetto a monument to a disappeared culture, and most of this culture was indeed destroyed. Kafka's three sisters all perished in the nameless horror of the Holocaust. Ironically, although the Western Jews had tried hard to assimilate and be accepted, in the end they were wiped out with the traditional Jews who followed the old ways. Nevertheless, the Polish and Russian Jews, the Eastern, traditional Jews got the worst of it, however—virtually all of them were wiped out. For instance, the Polish Jews had been about 3 to 4 million strong, making up about a tenth of Poland's population, and were utterly destroyed, almost all of the extermination camps, such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, etc. (as opposed to the concentration camps) being located there. Today there are about 5,000 Jews in all of Poland. The senseless, random cruelty still boggles the mind and seems in retrospect to be quite Kafkaesque, bringing to frightening life the arbitrary Court from The Trial, which is an exercise in futility to resist.
Today, as the malaise of the modern world deepens, the Judaism reflected
in Kafka's works seems to be more universal than ever. The uncertainty,
alienation, and sense of being an outsider in the world are felt, however
vaguely, by almost everyone, and the reflection of these feelings in Kafka
make him not just a Jewish writer, although he most definitely is that,
but also a universal one, able to transmute the feelings of all mankind
into an impressive work of art.