Acknowledgements
The idea for the present volume was conceived almost inadvertently, following a visit to an exhibit in the Neue Synagoge on Oranienburger Straße in Berlin, where a surprisingly musical-looking volume of Moses Mendelssohn’s Psalms translation had sparked my curiosity. Triggering my imagination, the initial spark yielded intuition and—just as Mendelssohn describes the workings of aesthetic stimuli and their effect on the soul—activated me to explore the extraordinary volume. It was not until a workshop on German Jewish Bible translation at the University of Potsdam in the fall of 2016 that the present enterprise was born, thanks to the attentiveness of Hanna Liss; I am extremely grateful to her, as well as to Giuseppe Veltri for the invitation to publish a bilingual edition of Sefer Zemirot Yisra’el in the series Studies in Jewish History and Culture at Brill.
Reading, explicating, let alone translating an eighteenth-century Hebrew text as rich and complex as Bril’s was a journey I could not have made on my own. I have been lucky to be accompanied by a great many colleagues and friends who offered their assistance, advice, and insights. This volume owes a great deal to the assistance and contribution of two people in particular. Eliezer Baumgarten has been indispensable to the project with his profound knowledge of early modern Jewish history and rabbinic literature, his generosity, and true friendship; Elli Fischer’s expertise as a translator, coupled with erudition in rabbinic literature, has been essential for the work on the English translation. I also owe thanks to Amir Banbaji for numerous conversations on Haskalah and melitsah at the cafeteria of the (old) National Library in Jerusalem. David (Dudu) Rotman was witness to the birth of the project and accompanied it with wise advice during its initial stages. Elchanan Reiner continuously provided generous advice on all aspects of early modern Jewish cultural history, literature, bibliography, and language, as well as much friendly support. Warren Zev Harvey advised me on the translation of philosophical terms and helped me to decipher the provenance of some of Joel Bril’s Hebrew words. Edward Breuer frequently shared with me his experience with and intimate knowledge of Mendelssohn’s Hebrew writings, and I thank him for his encouragement. I am especially grateful to Nati Kupfer, my dear friend and interlocutor in all Mendelssohn matters, for offering insights on concepts in philosophy and intellectual history, interspersed with much needed laughter and empathy; only he knows just how much.
I have had opportunities to share and discuss questions concerning sources, language, and translation with a number of friends, colleagues, mentors (sometimes all three in one) on various occasions in Jerusalem, Berlin, Potsdam, Oxford, Hamburg, Ann Arbor, Frankfurt, Boston, and Washington D.C. I would like to thank Shmuel Feiner, Uta Lohmann, Natalie Naimark-Goldberg, Yakir Paz, Yosefa Raz, Claudia Rosenzweig, Elias Sacks, Andrea Schatz, Christoph Schulte, Avi Siluk, David Sorkin, Rebekka Voß, Joanna Weinberg, Kathrin Wittler, and Irene Zwiep.
Since its inception, this enterprise has greatly benefited from the support of several institutions and funding bodies. I am grateful to the German Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF) for a Young Scientists Fellowship (2016–2017); the Open University of Israel for a Faculty Research Grant; the World Union of Jewish Studies for a Book Publication Grant; the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for a short-term fellowship that allowed me to begin my acquaintance with Joel Bril’s texts (2015); the Oxford Seminar for Advanced Jewish Studies for a visiting fellowship, which gave me the opportunity to explore the riches of the Bodleian Library for editions of Sefer Zemirot Yisra’el and related early modern books (2020); and to the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies for a visiting fellowship (2020–2021) with the Translating Jewish Cultures research group, which offered an unforgettable opportunity to engage with translation both as a practice and as a field of scholarly inquiry. I cannot overstate my gratitude to the cohort of scholars and translators, whose knowledge, advice, and inspiration left their mark on this as well as on other projects. I particularly want to thank Naomi Seidman, Maya Barzilai, Adriana Jacobs, Alessandro Guetta, Joshua Miller, and Roni Masel.
Material for this enterprise has been facilitated by several libraries. My thanks go to the staff of the Rare Books Department and Special Collections at the National Library in Jerusalem; the Bodleian Library, Oxford, especially to César Merchán-Hamann, the Hebrew and Judaica curator; and the Mehlmann Library at the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, Tel Aviv University.
Some sections from my introduction to this volume have previously appeared in a longer version in “Fashioning Biblical Poetry as a Diasporic Motherland in the Berlin Haskalah,” Azimuth IX, no. 18 (2021): 15–30; others are based on chapters from my monograph The People of the Song: Biblical Poetry, Translation, and the Reception of Moses Mendelssohn in the Berlin Haskalah (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2025). I thank the respective publishers for permission to use the material.
The acquisitions editor at Brill, Katelyn Chin, has accompanied me since before the book existed and has gracefully and patiently seen it to completion; I am also grateful to Emma de Looij and Katerina Sofianou for their assistance during the final stages of production. My warm thanks to Lies Meiboom, who in the last phases of preparation of the manuscript kindly offered generous feedback in addition to thorough and thoughtful copyediting. The map appended to this volume is the creation of Mark Gondelman, who rescued the data (and Albion) from oblivion. All mistakes in this volume are mine.
Finally, I am immeasurably grateful to Valeria de Lucca, my dearest friend and confidant in scholarly as in all other matters, come what may; and to Guy, who chimed in during the final act in the role of a most wonderful villain. My deepest gratitude goes out to my parents, whose commitment to writing and translation as acts of humanity continues to inspire me. My mother’s expertise in the art of translation has been invaluable to me, while my father’s intellectual enthusiasm continues to be contagious. But above all, their unwavering support, empathy, and rock-solid trust have made this and other journeys possible.