History
The encyclopedia was first published in Jerusalem from 1971–1972 in sixteen volumes, by Keter Publishing House, and in New York by the Macmillan Company. Between 1972 and 1994 additional yearbooks were published. Ten annual yearbooks were later collected in a 1973–1982 events supplement, and another 1983–1992 events supplement was also published. Together these volumes contained 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 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 had also been previously published at the turn of the twentieth century. It was followed by the Jüdisches Lexikon I–II (1927–28) and Encyclopaedia Judaica I–II (1927–28) and Zsidó Lexikon (1929, edited by Ujvári Péter, in Hungarian).
Because of its comprehensive scope, authority, and widespread availability, the Encyclopaedia Judaica has been 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.
The word Judaica is commonly used to refer to objects of Jewish art and Jewish ceremonial objects.
Read more about this topic: Encyclopaedia Judaica
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)