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There are two sorts of biography: the biography a famous person writes for his admirers, because the public likes to know everything about celebrities, and [the] autobiography, usually written because…
Israelites! If, scattered over the whole surface of the earth and intermingled with all nations, you remain attached to the old religion of your ancestors, however weak be the bond that unites you…
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza, one of the world’s foremost philosophers, was born in Amsterdam to parents of Portuguese New Christian origin and educated in the Talmud Torah of the Portuguese Sephardic…
I know a town in White Russia [Belarus] on the River Dnieper. Its name is Shklov. I was born there, went to heder there, which is why I know it so well.The flame of life burns calmly there. Nobody…
In a phrase of Hermann Cohen, Maimonides is the “classic of rationalism” in Judaism. This phrase appears to us to be correct in a stricter sense than Cohen may have intended: Maimonides’…
This sculpture of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) was created by Tassaert, a distinguished sculptor of the day. Mendelssohn sat for him, and copies of the bust were later made for Mendelssohn’s closest…
Awake, my people! How long will you slumber?
The night has passed, the sun shines bright.
Awake, lift up your eyes, look around you—
Acknowledge, I pray you, your time and your place. . . .
The…
Has he had the temerity to speak perversely against the foundations of the faith and of the Torah, and mocked the words of our sages of blessed memory recorded in the Mishnah and the Gemara, or has he…
Besides these, there are students of outstanding ability in their Torah study seated constantly in his presence—they are swifter than eagles and mightier than lions, each…
I wish, then, to describe the four classes to which Jews today belong in order to derive therefrom the principal claim of this discussion, namely: to the extent that the Jews do not take advantage of…