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:
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)