Jewish Theatre

From October 1911 onwards, Kafka regularly attended the productions of an eastern Jewish theatre group in the Café Savoy in the Prague Old Town. Kafka soon learned the song lyrics by heart and joined enthusiastically in the singing. Jizchak Löwy, the group’s leader and inspiration, made a deep impression on Kafka and the two men soon became friends. Kafka found in this Hasidic Jew from Warsaw the authentic Judaism that he missed in the assimilated western Judaism of his father. From then on he eagerly devoured books on Jewish themes. In February 1912, Kafka organized a poetry evening for the theatre group in the banqueting hall of the Jewish Town Hall in Prague, which he introduced with a talk about Yiddish jargon. 

Löwy – My father said of him: If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. I couldn’t stop myself and said something disorderly. To which father replies, particularly calmly […]: “You know that I mustn’t get excited and have to be treated with care. And you come out with things like that. I’ve had enough excitement, quite enough. So spare me speeches like that.” I say: “I’m doing my best to restrain myself,” and feel, as usual in such extreme moments, the existence of a wisdom in father, of which I can only grasp a breath.

Franz Kafka, Diaries