This modest little text, written in 1510 at the request of the Holy Roman Emperor who was under pressure to burn all Jewish religious books, is a landmark in the history of Jewish-Christian dialogue. In it, Johannes Reuchlin, legal scholar and enlightened thinker, was asked by the emperor to render an opinion and defended the rights of the Jews to live alongside Christians and to retain their sacred books. Reuchlin's response to the situation could be summed up as: Do not burn what you do not understand. Reuchlin brought revilement and persecution upon himself, but his courageous defense of Jewish books put an end to the attempt to destroy them. In her historical introduction Elisheva Carlsbach paints a superb picture of the period and the state of antisemitism in Europe in the sixteenth century. - until now this work has been inaccessible to English-speaking readers

Volume editor: Peter Wortsman