"In this fascinating book Gillman provides the first comprehensive overview of this phenomenon in English, tracing the development of the translations in the context of the Haskalah, Science of Judaism, modern Jewish denominations, and modernist aesthetics. . . . The book can be highly recommended to anyone interested in the reception of the Bible and in German Jewish history and culture."

Journal of Modern Jewish Studies

“A History of German Jewish Bible Translation is important because the subject of Bible translations is a key to the mentalité of German Jewry since Moses Mendelssohn. With a novel handle on a complex body of literature, Professor Gillman has crafted an original conceptual grid to overcome the atomized character of eleven distinct translations that, until now, have defied treatment by a single scholar. Gillman’s goal is not to discuss all translations, but rather to highlight the endless effort by German Jews to cultivate their religious identity in a Christian body politic deeply ambivalent about their integration.”

Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Theological Seminary

“Abigail Gillman’s work is a major scholarly achievement, indeed probably the most comprehensive study to date of the 170-year tradition of Jewish Bible translations into German. Gillman’s history is at the same time an important contribution to our understanding of the unique German-Jewish encounter in modernity, that is, of the philosophical, literary, cultural, and linguistic junction that brought to the world the likes of Moses Mendelssohn, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Else Lasker-Schüler, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Nelly Sachs, and Paul Celan, to name only a few luminaries. I am hard pressed to think of another book that brings together such a thorough consideration of Biblical translation across languages and cultures.”

Amir Eshel, Stanford University

"Abigail Gilman’s…is the first full-fledged book to offer a history of German Jewish bible translation as a whole…Gillman’s discussion seems to leave little untouched: from comparative textual analysis, through the paratextual level of introductions, commentary, and visual aspects, on to the biographies of the translator, their cultural environment, both Jewish and (too often neglected in previous studies) Christian, up to the contemporary reception and later legacies."

Ran HaCohen | Shofar

“…without doubt one of the most learned and eloquent books in her interdisciplinary field and one of the most profound reflections on the Jewish encounter with modernity. It is a multi-layered book that will excite the novice and the expert alike, and that will speak to us for time to come. Finally, it is a book that resembles an intricate work of art deserving nothing less than the title of a masterpiece.”

Asher D. Biemann | The German Quarterly