Every day now I dip into Kafka, because he was so intelligently engaged with the Jewish question in Europe at a time when Zionism enthralled Jews, because it seemed to be the answer. Kafka was both a Zionist and not a Zionist. He obviously saw Zionism as a way out of European antisemitism, but his ambivalence about Zionist gatherings is evident in everything he wrote on the subject. From his diary in 1912, on a friend, Dr. K, who is emigrating to Palestine:
This is the same division that Jewish life is dealing with today, between the chauvinists who are called to Palestine and those who are not. Because they are the guardians of Israel, and Israel is under existential attack, the chauvinists, coming back into the cave at night with blood on their cudgels, have dominated communal Jewish life for at least 40 years. As Abe Foxman astutely observed the other night at the 92d Street Y, after the '67 war, non-Zionism disappeared from organized Jewish life.
Now it's back. This is why Gaza is the anti-'67 War. It is revolutionizing American opinion, and probably revolutionizing young Jewish opinion too. We are dividing on our response to Gaza. David Zellnik, the non-Zionist playwright, who went to the Caryl Churchill's Gaza play last night in New York, was upset by Gaza. Whereas Jeffrey Goldberg, who hates Caryl Churchill's play, also defended the Gaza slaughter. Goldberg served in the IDF and has Maccabees forever in his mouth–and has been the most important Jewish journalist for the last six or seven years.
The pleasure of Kafka's diary excerpt is that it gets at the discomfort that people (Zionists like Dr. K) have when they cannot explain everything they believe to an audience, because that audience won't accept what they are saying and they know it. This is happening today. The Jewish community is doubting the chauvinists' wisdom on political questions. Look what they gave us: Iraq, Gaza, the idea of permanent war. They have "Maccabees forever in their mouths and want to take after them." We must defeat that idea to get past this ancient opposition.
