The Hackmey Hebrew Classical Library, a joint publication of Harvard University Press and Tel Aviv University Press, seeks to make accessible to the Anglophone reader, in a series of facing-page translations, the classical Hebrew and Aramaic texts from the post-biblical era to the rebirth of Hebrew in the nineteenth century.

From biblical times to the modern era, Hebrew and Aramaic were the languages of Jewish thought and devotion. They were the languages many Jewish intellectuals used for exegesis, halakha, mysticism, philosophy, literature, poetry, and science. From the Midrash to the Cabbala, from the Spanish poets’ reinvention of biblical Hebrew to the incorporation of German folklore into Jewish piety by the Hassidim of Ashkenaz, classical Jewish texts offer the reader a chance to explore the thoughts and ideas of the lesser-known half of the “Judeo-Christian” tradition.