Via Martin Buber. (Nahman/Nachman of Bratzlav/Bratslav was a 19th-century composer of mysterious, parable-like stories – a hasidic version of the sufi teaching stories – which probably constitute Kafka’s single greatest influence.)
“Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav has handed down to us these words of his great-grandfather, the Baal Shem Tov: ‘Alas! The world is full of enormous lights and mysteries, and man shuts them from himself with one small hand!'”
(Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters. Shocken, 1947. 74.)