Nahum Norbert Glatzer was a noted Jewish literary scholar, theologian, and editor.
He was the editor of Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, and a consulting editor of Schocken Books, an American publishing house where he was responsible, in part, for the publication of Franz Kafka’s writings in English translation. He also participated in editorial conferences in Germany on critical editions of Kafka's works.
He is known for his Geschichte der talmudischen Zeit (Berlin, Schocken-Verlag, 1937; 2nd ed., Neukirchen-Vluyn, Neukirchener Verlag, 1981); for seminal anthologies of Jewish sources in English translation; for his study of The Loves of Franz Kafka (New York, Schocken Books, 1986; published in a German translation by Otto Bayer as Frauen in Kafkas Leben (Zurich, Diogenes, 1987)); and for his influential biography of Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1953).
An excellent collection. Job is well worth spending time with and turning from every angle. The selections in this collection are (usually) just the right length, so that you can grasp the most important points the author is making without getting tired of the essay. Many essays astonished me; some annoyed me (particularly Ernest Renan's smarmy anti-Semitism, which was all too typical of early twentieth-century France). This book got me to thinking a lot and even doing some writing of my own.