It was once said that one of Kafka’s nephews went to see him in Prague (this nephew then lived with his wife in Wroclaw, where they both ran a football club) and this nephew asked Kafka about a dream that his wife had had a few nights before, just as he would have normally asked a Rabbi; but these were not normal times, for this nephew was a radical Socialist and had been excluded from (or, according to some, had left) the Hassidic community of his ancestors.

So, he went to Kafka and asked him about the meaning of his wife’s dream.

(You must know that, to this nephew’s great despair and to his mother’s great anger, his wife had not yet borne children.)

In the dream, this young woman (she had been born and raised in renowned family from Katowice) had been on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and she was praying and bowing on the grave of Rabbi Hillel, just like the prophet Samuel’s mother had done at Shiloh’s sanctuary; but then, the spirit of Hillel sprung into the air with a Pepsi Cola bottle in the right hand and a tennis racket in the left hand, and to her great surprise, he asked her about Roger Federer’s ATP ranking.

So what ?

**

Benjamin Lévy est psychanalyste, psychologue, philosophe, enseignant, ancien élève de l’ENS. Il a publié de nombreux articles, ainsi que plusieurs traductions d’ouvrages aux éditions Ithaque – dont par exemple la correspondance Freud-Federn (Cartes postales, notes & lettres de Sigmund Freud à Paul Federn, 1905-1938, Paris, Ithaque, 2018), autour de laquelle j’avais organisé une rencontre à la Librairie des Bateliers, Strasbourg, le 15.6.2019, pour un échange avec Jean-Raymond Milley.

Il publie aussi régulièrement des textes sur le blog (1).

Il anime avec Jean-Jacques Moscovitz le séminaire « Freud Lacan et Nous. Les incidences du contemporain dans les processus de subjectivation », de l’association Psychanalyse actuelle, hébergé dans les locaux de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure (2) .

Voici le lien vers son blog: https://benjaminlevy.wordpress.com/

**

Thanks to Jamie McPartland for the rereading!

She’s a writer and editor. Here is an interview about her work:

Meet Jamie McPartland, 2022 Oregon Literary Fellow

NOTES:

(1): https://dimitrilorrain.org/category/textes-de-benjamin-levy/

(2): https://sites.google.com/site/psychanalyseactuel/seminaire-de-psychanalyse-actuelle?authuser=0