Kafka — The Scribe of the Imponderables of the Modern Jewish Experience.

A virtual event presentation by Professor Paul Mendes-Flohr

ABOUT THE EVENT:

Kafka’s writings are marked by cryptic meditations on the modern world, which although celebrated as governed by rational and pragmatic criteria is often experienced as painfully absurd, utterly senseless.  He is thus read as the anguished voice of the modern individual writ large. And yet, Kafka’s framing of his modern condition may also be read as addressing the specific imponderables of the modern Jew.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Paul Mendes-Flohr is Professor emeritus of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Professor emeritus Jewish intellectual history at the Divinity School, The University of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including Martin Buber. A Life of Faith and Dissent (Yale, 2018) and Cultural Disjunctions: Post-Traditional Jewish Identities (University of Chicago Press, 2022).  He has written the introductions to the 100^th anniversary editions of the two translations of Martin Buber’s I and Thou, trans., R.G. Smith (Simon & Schuster, 2023), and trans., Walter Kaufmann (The Free Press, 2023).