“Modern Judaism the Essentials”, is an interview series produced by the Department for Modern Jewish History and Culture and the Institute for Israel Studies at the Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich. In this podcast, we speak with scholars about texts, we think are essential for Jewish modernity. The question “What makes a book or a text essential or canonical” is difficult to answer. Therefore, we suggest thinking about this podcast more as a textual mixtape representing a specific intellectual taste. For the third episode of this podcast, we invited Professor Barbara Hahn to speak about Hannah Arendt’s book Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess. The interview was recorded in February 2023. Speaker: Ghilad H. Shenhav