The reflections and deliberations in this book represent different aspects of the publishing, scholarly and media activity of the former Soviet political prisoner and Jewish-Ukrainian public intellectual, as well as co-initiator of Ukraine’s First of December Group, Joseph Zissels, over the past years. The book starts with outlines of Zissels’s self-understanding and comprehension of his involvement in the dissident movement. Based on his own research, the author offers his model of seeing modern Ukraine through the prism of the coordinates basic to the European system of values. The main themes of the book’s articles, lectures and interviews are civil society, identity formation, social tolerance, and Jewishness.

The book’s title has been chosen, by the author, from Psalm 5, Verse 2 of the Complete Jewish Bible: “Give ear to my words, Adonai, consider my inmost thoughts.”

Joseph Zissels is Co-President of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities (VAAD) of Ukraine, Chairman of the General Council of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, and Executive Vice President of the Congress of National Communities of Ukraine in Kyiv. In Soviet times, he was a member of the human rights movement, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, and a political prisoner.