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A new translation of Franz Kafka’s diaries restores much of his Jewish musings
(JTA) – Franz Kafka was a devotee of Yiddish theater, fell in love with his Hebrew teacher and once encountered the owner of a brothel he frequented in synagogue on Yom Kippur.
The broad strokes of Kafka’s biography have long been known to historians, but a new English translation of the Czech author’s complete and unabridged diaries gives readers the fullest possible picture of his complex, contradictory relationship with Judaism. For an author most famous for his depictions of loneliness, alienation and unyielding bureaucracy, Kafka often saw in Judaism an opportunity to forge a shared community.
“The beautiful strong separations in Judaism,” he praises at one point, in a disjointed style that is a hallmark of his diaries. “One gets space. One sees oneself better, one judges oneself better.”
Later, writing about a Yiddish play he found particularly moving, Kafka reflected on its depiction of “people who are Jews in an especially pure form, because they live only in the religion but live in it without effort, understanding or misery.” He was also involved with several local Zionist organizations, and toward the end of his life fell in love with Dora Diamant, the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi who taught him Hebrew (though she receives scant mention in the diaries).
“The Diaries of Franz Kafka,” translated by Ross Benjamin and out this week from Penguin Random House, collects every entry of the writer’s personal diaries covering the period from 1908 until 1923, the year before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 41.
Although versions of Kafka’s diaries had previously been published thanks to the efforts of his Jewish friend and literary executor Max Brod (with translation assistance from Hannah Arendt), they had been heavily doctored with many passages expunged, including some of what Kafka had written about his own understanding of Judaism. A German-language edition of the unabridged diaries was published in 1990.
The author of “The Metamorphosis,” “The Trial” and “The Castle” was raised by a non-observant father in Prague, and he hated the small amounts of Jewish culture he was exposed to at a young age, including his own bar mitzvah. In addition, the city’s largely assimilated German-speaking Jewish population tended to look down on poorer, Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews.
But Kafka’s diaries also reveal a growing fascination with Jewish culture in young adulthood, particularly around a traveling Yiddish theater troupe from Poland whom he saw perform nearly two dozen times. He developed a close relationship with the company’s lead actor, Jizchak Löwy, and would host recitation events where he’d give Löwy the opportunity to perform stories of Jewish life in Warsaw.
Kafka himself would even write and deliver an introduction to these performances in Yiddish. He would also witness his own father harboring prejudices towards his new friend Löwy: “My father about him: He who lies down in bed with dogs gets up with bugs.”
“The Metamorphosis” famously revolves around a man who inexplicably is transformed into a bug and then is rejected harshly by his family. In his introduction, Benjamin notes, “Scholars have suggested that such tropes, prevalent as they were in the antisemitic culture in which Kafka reckoned with his own Jewishness, influenced the themes of his fiction.”
Some of Kafka’s more ambiguous comments about his Jewish brethren were previously removed by Brod, according to Benjamin’s introduction to the diaries. At one point while hanging out with Löwy, Kafka invokes antisemitic stereotypes about Jewish uncleanliness: “My hair touched his when I leaned toward his head, I grew frightened due to at least the possibility of lice.” Benjamin notes: “Here Kafka confronts his own Western European Jewish anxiety about the hygiene of his Eastern European Jewish companion.”
Other revelations in the unexpurgated diaries include Kafka’s musings about his own sexuality.
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Eurovision Host Says It Will Not Drown Out Any Boos During Israel’s Performance
ORF executive producer Michael Kroen attends a press conference about the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, Austria, Dec. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner
The host broadcaster of the next Eurovision Song Contest, Austria’s ORF, will not ban the Palestinian flag from the audience or drown out booing during Israel’s performance as has happened at previous shows, organizers said on Tuesday.
The 70th edition of the contest in May will have just 35 entries, the smallest number of participants since 2003, after five national broadcasters including those of Spain, Ireland, and the Netherlands said they would boycott the show in protest at Israel’s participation.
What is usually a celebration of national diversity, pop music, and high camp has become embroiled in diplomatic strife, with those boycotting saying it would be unconscionable to take part given the number of civilians killed in Gaza during Israel’s military campaign following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
“We will allow all official flags that exist in the world, if they comply with the law and are in a certain form – size, security risks, etc.,” the show’s executive producer, Michael Kroen, told a news conference organized by ORF.
“We will not sugarcoat anything or avoid showing what is happening, because our task is to show things as they are,” Kroen said.
AUSTRIA SUPPORTED ISRAEL PARTICIPATING
The broadcaster will not drown out the sound of any booing from the crowd, as happened this year during Israel’s performance, ORF’s director of programming Stefanie Groiss-Horowitz said.
“We won’t play artificial applause over it at any point,” she said.
Israel’s 2025 entrant, Yuval Raphael, was at the Nova music festival that was a target of the Hamas-led attack. The CEO of Israeli broadcaster KAN had likened the efforts to exclude Israel in 2026 to a form of “cultural boycott.”
ORF and the Austrian government were among the biggest supporters of Israel participating over the objections of countries including Iceland and Slovenia, which will also boycott the next contest in protest. ORF Director General Roland Weissmann visited Israel in November to show his support.
This year’s show drew around 166 million viewers, according to the European Broadcasting Union, more than the roughly 128 million who Nielsen estimates watched the Super Bowl.
The war in Gaza began after Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and seized 251 hostages in an attack on southern Israel.
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Antisemitism Allowed to Fester in Australia, Says Daughter of Wounded Holocaust Survivor
Victoria Teplitsky, daughter of a Holocaust survivor who was wounded at the Bondi shootings, stands at a floral memorial in honor of the victims of the mass shooting targeting a Hanukkah celebration on Sunday, at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jeremy Piper
Government authorities have not done enough to stamp out hatred of Jews in Australia, which has allowed it to fester in the aftermath of Oct. 7, said the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who was wounded at the Bondi shootings on Sunday.
Victoria Teplitsky, 53, a retired childcare center owner, said that the father and son who allegedly went on a 10-minute shooting spree that killed 15 people had been “taught to hate,” which was a bigger factor in the attack than access to guns.
“It’s not the fact that those two people had a gun. It’s the fact that hatred has been allowed to fester against the Jewish minority in Australia,” she told Reuters in an interview.
“We are angry at our government because it comes from the top, and they should have stood up for our community with strength. And they should have squashed the hatred rather than kind of letting it slide,” she said.
“We’ve been ignored. We feel like, are we not Australian enough? Do we not matter to our government?”
The attackers fired upon hundreds of people at a Jewish festival during a roughly 10-minute killing spree, forcing people to flee and take shelter before both were shot by police.
RISING ANTISEMITIC ATTACKS
Antisemitic incidents have been rising in Australia since the war in Gaza erupted after Palestinian terrorist group Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis in an attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
A rise in such incidents in the past sixteen months prompted the head of the nation’s main intelligence agency to declare that antisemitism was his top priority in terms of threat.
“This was not a surprise to the Jewish community. We warned the government of this many, many times over,” Teplitsky said.
“We’ve had synagogues that have been graffitied, graffiti everywhere, and we’ve had synagogues that have been bombed,” she added, referring to a 2024 arson attack in Melbourne in which no one was killed.
Teplitsky’s father Semyon, 86, bled heavily after being shot in the leg, and now is facing several operations as doctors piece bone back together with cement, then remove the cement from the leg, which he still may lose, she said.
“He’s in good spirits, but he’s also very angry. Angry that this happened, that this was allowed to happen in Australia, the country that he took his children to, to be safe, to be away from antisemitism, to be away from Jew hatred.”
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “did nothing” to curb antisemitism.
Albanese repeated on Tuesday Australia‘s support for a two-state solution. Anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests have been common in Australia since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza.
At a press briefing on Monday, Albanese read through a list of actions his government had taken, including criminalizing hate speech and incitement to violence and a ban on the Nazi salute. He also pledged to extend funding for physical security for Jewish community groups.
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No News on Whereabouts or Health of Iranian Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi, Supporters Say
Taghi Ramahi, husband of Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian women’s rights advocate, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, poses with an undated photo of himself and his wife, during an interview at his home in Paris, France, Oct. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
The brother and lawyer of Iranian human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi said on Tuesday they have no information on her whereabouts or health, four days after her arrest.
Mohammadi was arrested on Friday after denouncing the suspicious death of lawyer Khosrow Alikordi during his memorial ceremony in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
“We have very little information about her health and we are very worried about how she’s being held, where she’s being held, and how she’s treated,” Hamid Mohammadi told reporters. He spoke after another brother in Iran, who cannot be named for security reasons, briefly spoke to her Monday night.
Mashhad prosecutor Hasan Hematifar said Saturday that Mohammadi and Alikordi’s brother made provocative remarks at the memorial, encouraging “norm-breaking slogans” and “disturbing the peace.”
COLLUDING AGAINST THE REPUBLIC
Hamid Mohammadi said his sister had confirmed she had been beaten and said she expected to be charged for “colluding against the Islamic Republic.”
She was struck on the head, face, and neck by security forces and arrested along with at least 39 others at the memorial, Hamid Mohammadi said. He added that his elder brother had asked for an independent medical assessment, which authorities had refused.
Iran’s foreign ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize whilst in prison in 2023, following her three-decade campaign for women’s rights and the abolition of the death penalty in Iran.
She has previously served multiple sentences on charges including spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic. Late last year, she was released from Tehran’s Evin prison after the suspension of her jail term to undergo medical treatment.
Her French lawyer, Chirinne Ardakani, said authorities will likely reactivate suspended sentences and bring her before a judge soon. “They have committed no crime except for exercising freedom of expression,” Ardakani said.
She said she would present the case to the International Criminal Court as evidence of Iran’s crackdown on activists.