This major new study explores the historical and literary context of Kafka's writings and links them with his emerging sense of Jewish identity. Emphasized throughout is kafka's concern with contemporary society, his distrust of its secular humanitarianism, and his yearning for a new kind of community: one based on religion. Robertson points out that in Kafka's early writing, social themes as well as psychological and moral ones are prominent but that in the later fiction many allusions and images are drawn from jewish history and tradition. His aphorisms-whose significance has been overlooked until now-are interpreted as a coherent and profound meditation on religion and society and as the intellectual framework for much of the fiction.