For the first time in Russian science, the book examines the views of one of the most controversial representatives of the German-Jewish intelligentsia of the first half of the twentieth century. Oscar Goldberg (1885-1952). A philosopher, anthropologist and orientalist who also received a higher Jewish education, he devoted his life to studying the nature of myth and ritual, the phenomena of the "sacred" and "profane," the problems of ethnopsychology of ancient civilizations and hermeneutics of sacred texts.