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''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on the history, culture, and state of
Judaism Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the ...
up to the early 20th century. The encyclopedia's managing editor was
Isidore Singer Isidore Singer (10 November 1859 – 20 February 1939) was an American encyclopedist and editor of ''The Jewish Encyclopedia'' and founder of the American League for the Rights of Man. Biography Singer was born in 1859 in Weisskirchen, M ...
and the editorial board was chaired by Isaac K. Funk and Frank H. Vizetelly. The work's scholarship is still highly regarded. The
American Jewish Archives The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, founded in 1947, is committed to preserving a documentary heritage of the religious, organizational, economic, cultural, personal, social and family life of American Jewry. It has be ...
deemed it "the most monumental Jewish scientific work of modern times", and Rabbi Joshua L. Segal said "for events prior to 1900, it is considered to offer a level of scholarship superior to either of the more recent Jewish encyclopedias written in English." It was originally published in 12 volumes between 1901 and 1906 by Funk & Wagnalls of New York, and reprinted in the 1960s by
KTAV Publishing House KTAV Publishing House is a publishing house located in Brooklyn, New York. Ktav means "to write" in Hebrew. Founded in 1921, it has been among the most notable publishers of Judaica and Jewish educational texts since the middle of the 20th cen ...
. It is now in the
public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...
.


History


Conception

Singer conceived of a Jewish encyclopedia in Europe and proposed creating an ''Allgemeine Encyklopädia für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums'' in 1891. He envisioned 12 volumes, published over 10 to 15 years, at a cost of 50 dollars as a set. They would contain scientific and unbiased articles on ancient and modern Jewish culture. This proposal received good press coverage and interest from the Brockhaus publishing company. After the House of Rothschild in Paris, consulted by
Zadoc Kahn Zadoc Kahn (18 February 1839 in Mommenheim, Alsace – 8 December 1905 in Paris) was an Alsatian-French rabbi and chief rabbi of France. Life In 1856 he entered the rabbinical school of Metz, finishing his theological studies at the same ...
, offered to back the project with only eight percent of the minimum funds requested by Brockaus, the project was abandoned. Following the
Dreyfus affair The Dreyfus affair (french: affaire Dreyfus, ) was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francop ...
and associated unpleasantness, Singer emigrated to
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. Initially believing that American Jews could do little more than provide funding for his project, Singer was impressed by the level of scholarship in the United States. He wrote a new prospectus, changing the title of his planned encyclopedia to ''Encyclopedia of the History and Mental Evolution of the Jewish Race''. His radical ecumenism and opposition to orthodoxy upset many of his Jewish readers; nevertheless he attracted the interest of publisher Isaac K. Funk, a Lutheran minister who also believed in integrating Judaism and Christianity. Funk agreed to publish the encyclopedia on the condition that it remain unbiased on issues which might seem unfavorable for Jews. Singer accepted and was established in an office at Funk & Wagnalls on . Publication of the prospectus in 1898 created a severe backlash, including accusations of poor scholarship and of subservience to Christians.
Kaufmann Kohler Kaufmann Kohler (May 10, 1843 – January 28, 1926) was a German-born Jewish American biblical scholar and critic, theologian, Reform rabbi, and contributing editor to numerous articles of ''The Jewish Encyclopedia'' (1906). Life and work Kauf ...
and
Gotthard Deutsch Gotthard Deutsch (; 31 January 1859 – 14 October 1921) was a scholar of Jewish history. Education Deutsch was born in Dolní Kounice, Moravia, Austria, as Eliezer Deutsch, the son of Bernhard L. Deutsch, a merchant, and Elise Wiener. He alwa ...
, writing in ''American Hebrew'', highlighted Singer's factual errors, and accused him of commercialism and irreligiosity. Now considering that the project could not succeed with Singer at the helm, Funk & Wagnalls appointed an editorial board to oversee creation of the encyclopedia.


Editorial board

Funk & Wagnalls assembled an editorial board between October 1898 and March 1899. Singer toned down his ideological rhetoric, indicated his desire to collaborate, and changed the work's proposed title to ''The Jewish Encyclopedia''. Despite their reservations about Singer, rabbi
Gustav Gottheil Gustav Gottheil (May 28, 1827, Pinne/Pniewy, Grand Duchy of Posen, Prussia – April 15, 1903, New York City) was a Prussian born American rabbi. Gottheil eventually became one of the most influential, well-known and controversial Reform Jew ...
and
Cyrus Adler Cyrus Adler (September 13, 1863 – April 7, 1940) was an American educator, Jewish religious leader and scholar. Early years Adler was born to merchant and planter Samuel Adler and Sarah Sulzberger in Van Buren, Arkansas on September 13, 186 ...
agreed to join the board, followed by
Morris Jastrow Marcus Jastrow (June 5, 1829 – October 13, 1903) was a German-born American Talmudic scholar, most famously known for his authorship of the popular and comprehensive ''Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic L ...
,
Frederick de Sola Mendes Frederick de Sola Mendes (July 8, 1850 in Montego Bay, Jamaica, West Indies – October 26, 1927 in New Rochelle, New York) was a rabbi, author, and editor. Family history and education Frederick de Sola Mendes was born into an old Spanish & Portu ...
, and two published critics of the project: Kauffmann Kohler and Gotthard Deutsch Theologian and Presbyterian minister George Foot Moore was added to the board for balance. Soon after work started, Moore withdrew and was replaced by Baptist minister
Crawford Toy Crawford Howell Toy (23 March 183612 May 1919), American Hebrew scholar, was born in Norfolk, Virginia. He graduated at the University of Virginia in 1856, and studied at the University of Berlin from 1866 to 1868. From 1869 to 1879 he was profess ...
. Last was added the elderly
Marcus Jastrow Marcus Jastrow (June 5, 1829 – October 13, 1903) was a German-born American Talmudic scholar, most famously known for his authorship of the popular and comprehensive ''Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic L ...
, mostly for his symbolic imprimatur as America's leading Talmudist. In March 1899, the
Central Conference of American Rabbis The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), founded in 1889 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, is the principal organization of Reform rabbis in the United States and Canada. The CCAR is the largest and oldest rabbinical organization in the world. I ...
, which had been contemplating a competing project, agreed to discuss collaborating with Funk & Wagnalls—thus securing the position of the ''Jewish Encyclopedia'' as the only major project of its kind.
Shuly Rubin Schwartz Shuly Rubin Schwartz is the Chancellor and Irving Lehrman Research Professor of American Jewish History and Sala and Walter Schlesinger Dean of the Gershon Kekst Graduate School at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS). As Chancellor, she ...
describes the payment scheme arranged at this time as follows: Other editors participating in all 12 volumes were
Gotthard Deutsch Gotthard Deutsch (; 31 January 1859 – 14 October 1921) was a scholar of Jewish history. Education Deutsch was born in Dolní Kounice, Moravia, Austria, as Eliezer Deutsch, the son of Bernhard L. Deutsch, a merchant, and Elise Wiener. He alwa ...
,
Richard Gottheil Richard James Horatio Gottheil (13 October 1862 – 22 May 1936) was an English American Semitic scholar, Zionist, and founding father of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity. Biography He was born in Manchester, England, but moved to the United States a ...
,
Joseph Jacobs Joseph Jacobs (29 August 1854 – 30 January 1916) was an Australian folklorist, translator, literary critic, social scientist, historian and writer of English literature who became a notable collector and publisher of English folklore. Jacobs ...
,
Kaufmann Kohler Kaufmann Kohler (May 10, 1843 – January 28, 1926) was a German-born Jewish American biblical scholar and critic, theologian, Reform rabbi, and contributing editor to numerous articles of ''The Jewish Encyclopedia'' (1906). Life and work Kauf ...
,
Herman Rosenthal Herman Rosenthal (October 6, 1843 – 1917) was an American author, editor, and librarian. Biography Rosenthal was born in Friedrichstadt (Jaunjelgava), Courland. He was educated at Bauske (Bauska) and Jakobstadt (Jēkabpils), graduating in 18 ...
, and
Crawford Howell Toy Crawford Howell Toy (23 March 183612 May 1919), American Hebrew scholar, was born in Norfolk, Virginia. He graduated at the University of Virginia in 1856, and studied at the University of Berlin from 1866 to 1868. From 1869 to 1879 he was profess ...
. Morris Jastrow, Jr. and Frederick de Sola Mendes assisted with volumes I to II; Marcus Jastrow with volumes I, II, and III; Louis Ginzberg with the first four volumes;
Solomon Schechter Solomon Schechter ( he, שניאור זלמן הכהן שכטר‎; 7 December 1847 – 19 November 1915) was a Moldavian-born British-American rabbi, academic scholar and educator, most famous for his roles as founder and President of the ...
with volumes IV through VII;
Emil G. Hirsch Emil Gustav Hirsch (May 22, 1851 – January 7, 1923) was a Luxembourgish-born Jewish American biblical scholar, Reform rabbi, contributing editor to numerous articles of ''The Jewish Encyclopedia'' (1906), anfounding member of the NAACP Biog ...
with volumes IV through XII; and
Wilhelm Bacher Wilhelm Bacher ( hu, Bacher Vilmos; yi, בִּנְיָמִין־זְאֵב בּאַככֿר, he, בִּנְיָמִין־זְאֵב בכר ''Benjamin Ze'ev Bacher''; 12 January 1850 – 25 December 1913)Joseph Jacobs Joseph Jacobs (29 August 1854 – 30 January 1916) was an Australian folklorist, translator, literary critic, social scientist, historian and writer of English literature who became a notable collector and publisher of English folklore. Jacobs ...
was hired as a coordinator. He also wrote four hundred articles and procured many of the encyclopedia's illustrations.
Herman Rosenthal Herman Rosenthal (October 6, 1843 – 1917) was an American author, editor, and librarian. Biography Rosenthal was born in Friedrichstadt (Jaunjelgava), Courland. He was educated at Bauske (Bauska) and Jakobstadt (Jēkabpils), graduating in 18 ...
, an authority on Russia, was added as an editor. Louis Ginzberg joined the project and later became head of the rabbinical literature department. The board naturally faced many difficult editorial questions and disagreements. Singer wanted specific entries for every Jewish community in the world, with detailed information about, for example, the name and dates of the first Jewish settler in Prague. Conflict also arose over what types of Bible interpretation should be included, as some editors feared that Morris Jastrow's involvement in " higher criticism" would lead to unfavorable treatment of scripture.


Scholarship

The scholarly style of ''The Jewish Encyclopedia'' aligns directly to the , an approach to Jewish scholarship and religion that flourished in 19th-century Germany. The encyclopedia may be regarded as the culmination of this movement, which sought to modernize scholarly methods in Jewish research. In the 20th century, the movement's members dispersed to Jewish Studies departments in the United States and
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
. The scholarly authorities cited in the encyclopedia—besides the classical and medieval
exegetes Exegesis ( ; from the Greek , from , "to lead out") is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Biblical works. In modern usage, exegesis can involve critical interpretation ...
—are almost uniformly figures, such as Leopold Zunz, Moritz Steinschneider,
Solomon Schechter Solomon Schechter ( he, שניאור זלמן הכהן שכטר‎; 7 December 1847 – 19 November 1915) was a Moldavian-born British-American rabbi, academic scholar and educator, most famous for his roles as founder and President of the ...
,
Wilhelm Bacher Wilhelm Bacher ( hu, Bacher Vilmos; yi, בִּנְיָמִין־זְאֵב בּאַככֿר, he, בִּנְיָמִין־זְאֵב בכר ''Benjamin Ze'ev Bacher''; 12 January 1850 – 25 December 1913)Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport Solomon Judah Löb HaKohen Rapoport ( he, שלמה יהודה כהן רפאפורט; June 1, 1786 – October 15, 1867) was a Galician and Czech rabbi and Jewish scholar. Rapoport was known by an acronym "Shir", שי"ר occasionally שיל ...
,
David Zvi Hoffmann David Zvi Hoffmann (November 24, 1843, Verbó, Austrian Empire – November 20, 1921, Berlin) (Hebrew: דוד צבי הופמן), was an Orthodox Rabbi and Torah Scholar. He headed the Yeshiva in Berlin, and published research on the Pent ...
, and
Heinrich Graetz Heinrich Graetz (; 31 October 1817 – 7 September 1891) was amongst the first historians to write a comprehensive history of the Jewish people from a Jewish perspective. Born Tzvi Hirsch Graetz to a butcher family in Xions (now Książ Wielko ...
. Its scholarly style is evident by the encyclopedia's almost obsessive attention to manuscript discovery, editing, publication, comparison, and dating. These endeavors were among the foremost interests of ''Wissenschaft'' scholarship. ''The Jewish Encyclopedia'' is an English-language work, but the vast majority of the encyclopedia's contemporary sources are German-language sources, since this was the mother tongue of the scholars and the '' lingua franca'' of Biblical scholarship in general in that period. Of all works cited not in German—usually the more classical works—the largest part are either in
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
or
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
. The only heavily cited English-language source of contemporary scholarship is Schechter's publications in ''
The Jewish Quarterly Review ''The Jewish Quarterly Review'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering Jewish studies. It is published by the University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (University of Pe ...
''. The significance of the work's publication in English rather than German or Hebrew is captured by Harry Wolfson, writing in 1926: The editors and authors of ''The Jewish Encyclopedia'' proved prescient in their choice of language, since within that same span of 25 years, English rose to become the dominant language of academic Jewish scholarship and among Jews worldwide. Wolfson continues that "if a ''Jewish Encyclopedia'' in a modern language were planned for the first time, the choice would undoubtedly have fallen upon English."


Editions

The unedited text of the original can be found at ''The Jewish Encyclopedia'' website. The site offers both JPEG facsimiles of the original articles and
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
transcriptions of all texts. The search capability is somewhat handicapped by the fact that the search mechanism fails to take into account the decision to maintain all
diacritical marks A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
in the transliterated
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
and
Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
from the 1901–1906 text, which used a large number of diacriticals not in common use today. Thus, for example, to successfully search for "
Halizah ''Halizah'' (or ''chalitzah''; he, חליצה) is, under the biblical system of levirate marriage known as ''yibbum'', the process by which a childless widow and a brother of her deceased husband may avoid the duty to marry. The process invol ...
"—the ceremony by which the widow of a brother who has died childless released her brother-in-law from the obligation of marrying her—one would have to know that they have transliterated this as "Ḥaliẓah". The alphabetic index ignores diacriticals so it can be more useful when searching for an article whose title is known. The scholarly apparatus of citation is thorough, but can be a bit daunting to contemporary users. Books that might have been widely known among scholars of Judaism at the time the encyclopedia was written (but which are quite obscure to a lay reader today) are referred to by author and title, but with no publication information and often without indication of the language in which they were written. ''The Jewish Encyclopedia'' was heavily used as a source by the 16-volume ''Jewish Encyclopedia'' in Russian, published by Brockhaus and Efron in
Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
between 1906 and 1913.


See also

* ''
Encyclopaedia Judaica The ''Encyclopaedia Judaica'' is a 22-volume English-language encyclopedia of the Jewish people, Judaism, and Israel. It covers diverse areas of the Jewish world and civilization, including Jewish history of all eras, culture, holidays, langu ...
'' * ''
Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia The ''Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia'' (''SJE''; russian: Краткая еврейская энциклопедия, Kratkaya Yevreyskaya Entsiklopedia) was published in 11 volumes in Jerusalem from 1976 to 2005 in Russian by the Society for Resear ...
'' * '' The New Jewish Encyclopedia''


References


Citations


Sources

* * * *


External links


Jewish Encyclopedia Online
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Jewish Encyclopedia, The 1901 non-fiction books 1906 non-fiction books 20th-century encyclopedias American online encyclopedias Funk & Wagnalls books Jewish encyclopedias Reference works in the public domain