The original appearance of this book was enthusiastically greeted by Sir Godfrey Driver: 'The interest of this little book is out of all proportion to its size; for Dr Kohler has compressed an immense amount of information into a small space. He describes the life of an ordinary Hebrew man from the physical, psychological and intellectual points of view: his body in health and ill-health, expectation of life, upbringing, manhood and health, his attitude to the vicissitudes of life and the spiritual influences forming its background and working on him.' The English translation first published in 1956 has been out of print for some while, but the passage of time has not invalidated the main emphasis of the work, and this reissue is undertaken in the belief that the book still provides an excellent entry into a world familiar from the long tradition of reading the Old Testament in synagogue and church, but in reality strange and different from contemporary life.
