The present source deals with the Foreword to a collection of expert report entitled Dibere Haberith (Words of the Covenant, DH), that the three executive board members (Dajanim) of the rabbinic judicial court of the Hamburg Congregation – Baruch Meyer, Jacob Meyer Jaffe, und Michel Israel Speyer– published in the German language in September 1819, in order to respond to the erection of a new Reform synagogue, the "New Israelite Temple Association." In May / June 1819, the collection appeared first in a Hebrew edition, which soon thereafter was supplemented with a German-language edition printed in Hebrew letters. At the “wish of several readers” (Preface to Dibere Haberith), finally there appeared a German-language edition in Latin letters, from which the following textual excerpt is taken – apparently, a part of the readership could no longer read Hebrew. Unlike the Hebrew version, which first and foremost represented a halakhic compendium, the German version was meant for “general use” (Preface to Dibere Haberith) and therefore dispensed with the cross-references to rabbinic sources. A few opinions – for example, that of the Alsatian Rabbi Katzenellenbogen – are completely missing.