oa Between Jesus and Kafka: the parables of Seder Eliyahu

Kafka’s stories contain an element that is essential to understanding Jewish parables: they seem to lead to a dead-end street, by bringing forward an anomaly. Sometimes vital information is missing or the task turns out to be impossible or testifying of a cruel intent. In the Midrash collection of Seder Eliyahu we find similar anomalies and bizarre and cruel traits. Although the parables in the gospels are more sober than those in Seder Eliyahu, they too share the same traits. Attempts to explain these anomalies away by pointing to a supposed practice in society or to propose a harmonizing reading fail to acknowledge the crucial function of the anomaly.