About This Text
Author: Samson Raphael Hirsch
Composed: Oldenburg, Germany, 1836 CE
Written by Samson Raphael Hirsch in 1836 under the pseudonym “Ben Uziel,” Nineteen Letters is a defense of Orthodox Judaism. Rabbi Hirsch wrote Nineteen Letters in German while he was rabbi of Oldenburg. In this work, written in the form of a fictional correspondence between a young rabbi-philosopher and a young intellectual, he confronts the challenges that emancipation created for modern Jews.