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This translation has a long and fascinating history. It was begun but not completed in the early 1950s by my late father, Lewis C. Kaplan, from an acclaimed novel in Dutch, Jesus and Menachem by Siegfried Emanuel van Praag, the prolific Dutch-Jewish writer of more than sixty books. Van Praag was born to Jewish parents and was the youngest of three sons. Apart from his Dutch and Jewish cultural roots, Siegfried’s education also introduced him to French language and culture. He pursued French studies at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, after which he became a lecturer at the Hogereburgerscholen in Purmerend. The rise of Nazism may have prompted a move to Brussels in 1936, and was definitely the reason why Van Praag and his family left the continent for England in 1940. In London he worked for the Dutch and Belgian radio programmes of the BBC. The war and the shoah made a considerable impression on Van Praag, and his consequent preoccupation with Jewish culture and identity—specifically Dutch Jewish culture and the newly formed country of Israel—can be noted in the published works that follow this period.

Lew Kaplan, a published translator in America of Brazilian and later Dutch novels was struck by the importance and beautiful prose of this novel when he first read it. He translated a large part of the novel and outlined the remainder while he was searching for a publisher. In a letter addressed to a “Mr. Weinstock” on July 25, 1952, my father described the book as containing “profound discussions, beautiful language, and deeply moving dramatic scenes.” My father died of complications from childhood rheumatic fever in 1958 before he was able to find a publisher. The uncompleted translation lay dormant in my possession for many years. In the late 1980s, I met Dr. Herman M. van Praag, then chief of psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in the course of my work in suicide and in psychology and religion. I recognized his last name as the same as the author of this book, Siegfried van Praag, and inquired as to whether the two van Praags were related. Herman M. van Praag informed me that Siegfried was his uncle and was then living in Belgium. As it turned out, I was going to a conference that year in Brussels and had the honor to meet Siegfried. He remembered my father’s work from years past, but had not realized my father died, and thought he had lost interest in the project. Many years after the work originally began, I was able to finally sign a contract in 2004 with the children of Siegfried, Dr. Herman J. van Praag and Dr. Ganna J. Ottevaere-van Praag, to complete this project. It has taken me many years to finish my father’s translation, and I have now done so with the wonderful help of Pieter Uys, a talented student of mine from South Africa. Thanks are also due to Larry ten Harmsel for his resolving of certain translation inconsistencies.

And of course this book is important in placing Yeshua of Nazareth in the context of the Judaism and Israel of his time. While fictional, this book introduces the character of Menachem in an attempt to deepen the understanding between the Jewish people and the Christian world to foster an intelligent understanding of a Biblical approach towards life.

Kalman J. Kaplan