The Jewish Encyclopedia
Editor | Isidore Singer |
---|---|
Language | English |
Publisher | Funk & Wagnalls |
Publication date | between 1901 and 1906 |
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
The work's scholarship is still highly regarded. The
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. It is now in the public domain.
History
Conception
Part of a series on |
Jews and Judaism |
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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, offered to back the project with only eight percent of the minimum funds requested by Brockaus, the project was abandoned. Following the Dreyfus affair and associated unpleasantness, Singer emigrated to New York City.[3]
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 2 May 1898.[4]
Publication of the prospectus in 1898 created a severe backlash, including accusations of poor scholarship and of subservience to Christians. Kaufmann Kohler and Gotthard Deutsch, 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.[5]
Editorial board
Theologian and Presbyterian minister
Members of the local executive committee, exclusive of Singer and, of course, Funk, would receive one thousand dollars per annum, while the rest of the department editors would receive five hundred. All collaborators, editors included, would be paid five dollars per printed page of about one thousand English words. If the article was written in a foreign language, payment would be only $3.50 per page. Singer's compensation was forty dollars a week (thirty-five plus five for a life insurance premium). His salary was considered an advance, since Singer alone was to share with the company in the profits.[6]
Other editors participating in all 12 volumes were
The editors plunged into their enormous task and soon identified and solved some inefficiencies with the project. Article assignments were shuffled around and communication practices were streamlined. Joseph Jacobs was hired as a coordinator. He also wrote four hundred articles and procured many of the encyclopedia's illustrations. Herman Rosenthal, an authority on Russia, was added as an editor. Louis Ginzberg joined the project and later became head of the rabbinical literature department.[7]
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.[8]
Scholarship
The scholarly style of The Jewish Encyclopedia aligns directly to the
The scholarly authorities cited in the encyclopedia—besides the classical and medieval exegetes—are almost uniformly Wissenschaft figures, such as Leopold Zunz, Moritz Steinschneider, Solomon Schechter, Wilhelm Bacher, Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport, David Zvi Hoffmann, and Heinrich Graetz. 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.[9]
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 Wissenschaft scholars and the
The significance of the work's publication in English rather than German or Hebrew is captured by
About twenty-five years ago, there was no greater desert, as far as Jewish life and learning, than the English-speaking countries, and English of all languages was the least serviceable for such a Jewish work of reference. To contemporary European reviewers of The Jewish Encyclopedia, the undertaking seemed then like an effort wasted on half-clad Zulus in South Africa and Jewish tailors in New York. Those who were then really in need of such a work and could benefit thereby would have been better served if it were put out in Hebrew, German or Russian.[10]
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."[10]
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 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
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
See also
References
Citations
- ^ The New York Times. 16 Aug. 1902.
- ^ a b Marcus 1974.
- ^ Schwartz 1991, pp. 25–27.
- ^ Schwartz 1991, pp. 28–31.
- ^ Schwartz 1991, pp. 33–36.
- ^ Schwartz 1991, pp. 37–51.
- ^ Schwartz 1991, pp. 51–56.
- ^ Schwartz 1991, pp. 57–59.
- ^ Schwartz 1991, pp. 2–4.
- ^ a b Schwarz 1965.
Sources
- "The Jewish Encyclopedia". The New York Times. 16 August 1902.
- Marcus, J. R. (1974). The Larger Task (Speech). Ninetieth Ordination Exercises of the Hebrew Union College. Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives.
- Schwarz, L. W. (1965). "A Bibliographical Essay". In Lieberman, S. (ed.). Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume. Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research.
- ISBN 0878204121.
External links
- Jewish Encyclopedia Online
- The Jewish Encyclopedia at the HathiTrust Digital Library
- The Jewish Encyclopedia at the Internet Archive