A dialogue between Kafka’s «Before the Law» and Roth’s The Legend of the Holy Drinker, two stories that almost literally coincide with the entre–deux–guerre period, suggests a comparison of interpretations where authors such as Benjamin, Arendt, Mann, Scholem, Adorno, Steiner or Magris have taken part. In the context of the twenties and the thirties these and other stories by the same authors display a question about justice which in the hands of thinkers like Hugo Bergmann, Frank Rosenzweig, and Martin Buber triggered a rethinking of Central European Judaism, today almost forgotten, that nevertheless witnesses not only the crisis of Hebrew but also of European culture.
