Scholem’s Kafka: Not a Nihilistic, but Rather a Secular, Kabbalist

Abstract

Gershom Scholem devised the ironic formulation that Kafka’s literature depicts the Kabbalah from a secular perspective. This declaration, when unraveled, offers an indispensable key to understanding Scholem’s views on Kafka. Scholem’s formulation stems from his dialectical perspective of Jewish history and his reliance on the notion of Zimzum therewith. For Scholem, Kafka’s literature manifests the tenor of the Kabbalah without the Kabbalah’s content. The kabbalistic tenor of his literature reflects Kafka’s actual world in which God’s commandments have dissipated but the faintest whisperings of God can still be sensed. This state of the world is that of the Zimzum at its nadir. Scholem describes Kafka as caught on the border between religion and nihilism; he cannot be religious because when the Zimzum is at its nadir all religious content has disappeared. Yet, Kafka is also not a nihilist because he holds on to the possibility of God’s return in a future epoch. In fact, ironically, it is Kafka’s depiction of God’s hiddenness which causes Scholem to write so adoringly of him despite his bordering on nihilism. That is because for Scholem, one who depicts God’s hiddenness, while seeming to embrace nihilism, is actually prophesizing, albeit unconsciously, Judaism’s glorious return.