The Israeli Germanist and author Jakob Hessing dedicates his book to the transitions from sacred to secular text in modern times. The focus is on texts from three different temporal and spatial origins: the works of Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka and Paul Celan. The author interprets this against the background of the transformation of religious substance into new spaces of freedom for the individual, which has accompanied the entry of Jews into German culture since Moses Mendelssohn. In doing so, he primarily focuses on the parable as a linguistic configuration that most clearly shows the process of change.