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A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s Gratitude does not describe the debt I owe for the colloquy about Kafka that made this book possible—beginning with my mother, who told me she could not speak Yiddish and certainly not Hebrew. Her lively conversations in Yiddish on park benches in Tel Aviv, after a lifetime of claiming not to speak the language, first exposed me to the relation between the hidden and the open explored in this book. Though my father’s skill at Jewish vaudeville may not seem like a positive resource for such a study, I thank him for an expertise that allowed me to discover the comedy hiding in plain sight. I also discovered more about Kafka than comes through in these pages from Sacvan Bercovitch, Amir Eshel, Willi Goetschel, Benjamin Harshav, Sharon Kinoshita, Jon Klancher, Winfried Kudszus, D. A. Miller, Hanna Roisman, Yossi Roisman, Doris Sommer, and all the students of my Franz Kafka and modern Jewish writing courses. Willi Goetschel read the entire manuscript and made many helpful suggestions. I am also grateful to Martha Helfer, Bill Donahue, Adam Newton, Mary Rhiel, Judith Ryan, Doris Sommer, and Liliane Weissberg for opportunities to present parts of this book in different forums, and to Robert Alter, who allowed the seeds of this study to grow in my own rough ground. As an editor, Jerry Singerman was both a true professional and a mensch. In Israel, Avi Avidov and Mark Gelber generously helped me acquire new material. Portions of Chapter 1 appeared as “Kafka’s Politics: Goethe, Zionism and the Hidden Openess of Tradition,” Journal of the Kafka Society of America, nos. 1–2 (June–December 2005): 71–83, and as “Kafka’s Jewish Languages: The Hidden Openess of Tradition,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 15, no. 2 (2007): 65–132. During the process of writing, my wife Karen and daughters Dani and Jessi made my life far better than Kafka’s research dog—as it were. Each of them provided the nourishment I needed to bring this project to completion. The entire family provided the advice and support—under the table and above— that brought me back, when I strayed, to our family tradition, where all the best discoveries were made. This book is for them. ...

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