I have also written a book about the Giving of the Torah, and a book on the Days of Awe, and a book on the books of Israel that have been written since the day the Torah was given to Israel.

Through a historical catastrophe - the destruction of Jerusalem by the emperor of Rome - I was born in one of the cities in the diaspora. But I always deemed myself a child of Jerusalem, one who is in reality a native of Jerusalem.

It is not enough for a man to dwell in the Land of Israel, he must also pray to be free.

People's talk and the stories they tell have been engraved on my heart, and some of them have flown into my pen.

When I first began to combine letters other than Hebrew, I read every book in German that came my way, and from these I certainly received according to the nature of my soul.

After all my possessions had been burned, God gave me the wisdom to return to Jerusalem.

The fate of the singers who, like my songs, went up in flame was also the fate of the books which I later wrote. All of them went up in flame to Heaven in a fire which broke out one night at my home in Bad Homburg as I lay ill in a hospital.