Judaica

The Encyclopaedia Judaica is a 26-volume English-language encyclopedia of the Jewish people and their faith, Judaism. It covers diverse areas of the Jewish world and civilization, including Jewish history in all eras, culture, holidays, language, scripture, and religious teachings. more...

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History

It was first published in 1971-1972 in sixteen volumes. It was published in Jerusalem by Keter Publishing House and in New York by the Macmillan Company.

Between 1972 and 1994, ten annual yearbooks were collected in a 1973-1982 events supplement and a 1983-1992 events supplement was added. Together these volumes contain more than 15 million words in over 25,000 articles.

Its general editors were, successively, Cecil Roth and Geoffrey Wigoder. Advertisers describe it as the result of about three decades of study and research by about 2,200 contributors and 250 editors around the world.

A Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia in Russian, launched in the early 1970s as an abridged translation of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, evolved into a largely independent publication that by late 2005 included eleven volumes and three supplements.

An earlier, unfinished German-language Encyclopaedia Judaica was published by Nahum Goldmann's Eshkol Publishing Society in Berlin 1928-1934. The chief editors were Jakob Klatzkin and Ismar Elbogen. Ten volumes from Aach to Lyra appeared before the project halted due to the Nazi persecutions. Two Hebrew-language volumes A-Antipas were also published, under the title Eshkol (Hebrew אשכול). A few of the articles from the German Judaica and even some of the reparations payments to Goldmann were used in making the English-language Judaica. A shorter Jewish Encyclopedia was published at the turn of century. It was followed by the Jüdisches Lexikon I — II (1927 — 28) and Encyclopedia Judaica I — II (1927 — 28) and Zsidó Lexikon (1929, edited by Ujvári Péter, in Hungarian language).

The English-language Judaica is also available on CD-ROM. The CD-ROM version is enhanced by at least 100,000 hyperlinks and several other features including videos, slide shows, maps, music and Hebrew pronunciations.

Because of its comprehensive scope, authority, and widespread availability, the Encyclopaedia Judaica is recommended by the Library of Congress and by the Association of Jewish Libraries for use in determining the authoritative romanization of names of Jewish authors. Its guidelines for transliterating Hebrew into English are followed by many academic books and journals.

The 1972 edition has generated both positive and negative reviews.

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