On the Hebrew calendar, Friday was the 100th anniversary of the death of Franz Kafka. David Herman reviews a new exhibit on the Prague-born writer at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, which is “the largest exhibition of Kafka’s manuscripts and drawings ever shown.”

Some of the letters are fascinating. . . . His Hebrew notebook, glossary, and his letter (in Hebrew) to his teacher demonstrate his dedication to learning the language that connected him to his family roots. And there is the note to his friend Max Brod in which he famously instructs him to burn all his unpublished manuscripts.

Kafka’s family was not especially religious, but he was deeply interested in many different aspects of Jewishness: the new Zionist movement, Judaism, and Yiddish theatre. In the winter of 1911–12, a troupe of actors from Lemberg (then the capital of Galicia) visited Prague to perform plays in Yiddish. Kafka attended some twenty of the performances and the experience introduced him to the very different Jewish culture of Eastern Europe, which seemed more alive, part of a living tradition.

The Hebrew writer S.Y. Agnon was born just a few years after Kafka in a shtetl not far from Lemberg, and deeply immersed in that living tradition. Jeffrey Saks writes:

Many readers and scholars have woven webs of connections between the two writers, a fact that endlessly agitated Agnon, leading him to state in 1962: “What is said about me and Kafka is a mistake. Before I published my Book of Deeds I knew nothing of Kafka’s stories except for his Metamorphosis, and even now, except for The Trial, . . . I have not taken a Kafka book in hand. . . . Kafka is not of my soul’s root, and whatever is not of my soul’s root I do not absorb.”

Despite Agnon’s warning, Saks weaves a new connection between the two writers: just a day after Kafka’s death, a fire broke out at Agnon’s house in Germany, destroying his collection of (he claimed) 4,000 Hebrew books and several of his own unpublished manuscripts, including a 700-page novel. In other words, Kafka’s wish for his oeuvre was visited on Agnon’s. This is an eerie coincidence worthy of one of the Hebrew writer’s own stories, if not one of Kafka’s.

While Hamas’s leaders continue to reject the U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal, they have hardly been neglecting diplomacy. Ehud Yaari explains:

Over the past few weeks, Hamas leaders have been engaged in talks with other Palestinian factions and select Arab states to find a formula for postwar governance in the Gaza Strip. Held mainly in Qatar and Egypt, the negotiations have not matured into a clear plan so far, but some forms of cooperation are emerging on the ground in parts of the embattled enclave.

Hamas officials have informed their interlocutors that they are willing to support the formation of either a “technocratic government” or one composed of factions that agree to Palestinian “reconciliation.” They have also insisted that security issues not be part of this government’s authority. In other words, Hamas is happy to let others shoulder civil responsibilities while it focuses on rebuilding its armed networks behind the scenes.

Among the possibilities Hamas is investigating is integration into the Palestinian Authority (PA), the very body that many experts in Israel and in the U.S. believe should take over Gaza after the war ends. The PA president Mahmoud Abbas has so far resisted any such proposals, but some of his comrades in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are less certain:

On June 12, several ex-PLO and PA officials held an unprecedented meeting in Ramallah and signed an initiative calling for the inclusion of additional factions, meaning Hamas. The PA security services had blocked previous attempts to arrange such meetings in the West Bank. . . . Hamas has already convinced certain smaller PLO factions to get on board with its postwar model.

With generous help from Qatar, Hamas also started a campaign in March asking unaffiliated Palestinian activists from Arab countries and the diaspora to press for a collaborative Hamas role in postwar Gaza. Their main idea for promoting this plan is to convene a “Palestinian National Congress” with hundreds of delegates. Preparatory meetings have already been held in Britain, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Qatar, and more are planned for the United States, Spain, Belgium, Australia, and France.

If the U.S. and other Western countries are serious about wishing to see Hamas defeated, and all the more so if they have any hopes for peace, they will have to convey to all involved that any association with the terrorist group will trigger ostracization and sanctions. That Hamas doesn’t already appear toxic to these various interlocutors is itself a sign of a serious failure.