Nathan Rotenstreich wrote that understanding the world is a precondition for changing it. Since his years in the youth movement "Gordonia", he was loyal to bringing together thoughts and ideas with the twisted road to their realization. His writings influenced and inspired, and still do so, the existential struggles of the Jewish world and of Israel in the turmoil of times. The present collection of papers aims to be a link to the interaction between thoughts and deeds, and between intellectual heritage and what he called: "The tempo of action and events" . Many of his writings bear very clear interpretations, so much so that it seems they were written in the present. These papers are hidden in periodicals, protocols of conventions and newspapers. Therefore it is appropriate they should be partly exposed in the new volume so that they are available and challenging for future generations. Moreover, his special contributions will illuminate aspects of the renewable sides of his work. The collection marks Nathan Rotenstreich 100 birthday and 20 years since he passed away.

This book is concerned with the exploration of the concept of human dignity, which is taken as the ultimate basis of the entitlement of man to his special position in the inter-human context, and also as what can be described as the metaphysical orbit. The thesis of the book is that the concept is so eclectic that it is mandatory to explore its various components: man and morality, and the attribution of sanctity to human life. The method pursued explores these various aspects by analyzing the most prominent expressions of the various views of philosophers, and adding critical comments to the analysis.

This book is based on notes taken at the lectures of the late Professor Yitzhak Julius Guttman (1880-1950) on topics relating to the philosophy of religion. Guttman, in these lectures, made use of the comparative material at his disposal. Nevertheless, there is a specific direction to the mode of comparison he adopts; he not only seeks to promote the idea that there is a classification within the field of religious phenomena with regard to distinguishing between the higher and the lower phenomena, but he also wishes to show that, in the area of higher religiosity, monotheism represents the supreme stage of religious development.

This book contains a selection of the historical and methodological articles of Isaac Julius Guttman (1880-1950), a Jewish philosophy scholar and one of the first of the Hebrew University. Guttman was one of those thinkers who did much thinking and little writing. Each article emphasizes his spiritual character and his knowledge of Judaism as well as ancient Greek, Christianity, Islam and European cultures.