Siegfried Emanuel van Praag was a prolific Dutch Jewish writer of over sixty books. The rise of Nazism considerably impacted his life and provoked a consequent preoccupation with Jewish culture and identity--specifically Dutch Jewish culture and the newly formed country of Israel. Lewis C. Kaplan was a Chicago-born historian, writer, and published translator with a gift for languages (including Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Yiddish) and an interest in Jewish history and biblical Israel.