9 - Kafka and Jewish folklore

Summary

Kafka's trials and animal metamorphoses are very common motifs in Jewish folklore; he also rewrote ancient myths and legends and frequently used a mock-midrashic, rabbinic discourse. Of course, many folk elements discussed in this chapter are not restricted to Jewish folklore but share characteristics with other folk traditions. What is of interest is the way Kafka recreates folk motifs and legends within a modern Jewish cultural framework and thus gives them new meaning. Folk elements, whether Jewish or non- Jewish, never exist for their own sake but rather merge with the author's own imagination. Thus, the nineteenth-century writer Mendele Moykher Sforim (c.1836-1917) has a downtrodden mare represent the Jewish people in Exile. Yudl Rosenberg (1860-1935) writes a story about the Prague Golem, pretending that the sixteenth-century Rabbi Löw created this humanoid monster 'to wage war against the Blood Libel' ('ritual murder') - the anti-Semitic charge according to which Jews needed Christian blood for their Passover rituals and slaughtered Christian children in order to obtain it. Rosenberg knew full well that his version of the Golem legend was historically incorrect. The Golem, a creature made from clay, was supposed to help in times of persecution, but no legend had ever connected it with the scandal of blood libel. Still, when Rosenberg was composing his story, charges of ritual murder were ubiquitous. For this reason he used a prominent motif from Jewish folklore to recreate for his time a superhuman folk hero who could help fight injustice.