As noted in Encyclopaedia Judaica on Encyclopaedia Judaica {1997}
[CD–ROM] –
“The Encyclopaedia Judaica, first published in 1972 and updated through regular Year Books and Decennial volumes…
Previous Jewish Encyclopedias
The English–language Jewish Encyclopedia, the first complete work of this nature, appeared in New York at the beginning of the 20th century (its twelfth and final volume was published in 1906). This pioneering work summed up the state of Jewish scholarship and the condition of the Jewish world at the time. It was an extraordinary achievement—especially if one considers the relatively small numbers of the English–speaking and English–reading Jewish population at the time. It was able, however, to call upon the collaboration of Jewish scholars in many countries—in particular the representatives of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, the School of Scientific Jewish Scholarship, then at its height. There were aspects that it tended to overlook or underplay, such as the world of Eastern European Jewry, Kabbalah and Hasidism, Yiddish language and literature, and the life and culture of the Jews in Muslim lands, but seen as a whole, it was a monumental work incorporating many entries which became classic statements on their subject.
The 16–volume Russian Jewish encyclopedia Yevreyskaya Entsiklopediya, which also appeared before World War I, was well conceived and in some respects brilliantly edited. Particularly outstanding was its expertise on East European Jewish subjects. The 10–volume Hebrew Ozar Yisrael (1924), an almost single–handed achievement by J.D. Eisenstein, was on a far smaller scale and had less rigorous standards, although in certain areas its articles presented useful material…
In the first years of World War II (1939–43) the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, edited by Isaac Landman, was issued in the United States in ten volumes. It was able to reflect the growing importance of U.S. Jewry and to take into account late developments, especially in American Jewish history and biography. It had considerable merits, but was not an ambitious work. Moreover, the fact that is was published in a period of major transition in itself set a limit to its utility. It was, however, the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia which constituted the basis of the ten–volume Spanish–language Enciclopedia Judaica Castellana produced in Mexico between 1948 and 1951. The major contribution of this latter work lay in its original entries dealing with the development of Jewish life in Latin America.
After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Hebrew language Encyclopaedia Hebraica began to be published in Jerusalem by the Massada Publishing Company, directed by the Peli family. This was the first large–scale general encyclopedia in the Hebrew language—and naturally it emphasized the Jewish aspects of various subjects, some of them of high scholarly importance and in certain cases even pioneering studies in their field. But though it contains the elements of a Jewish encyclopedia, it was not—nor was it intended to be—a Jewish encyclopedia as such.
The Development of the Encyclopaedia Judaica
For many years, and especially since the cataclysmic events in Jewish history of the 1940s, the need was felt for an entirely new Jewish encyclopedia, especially in the English language for English–speaking Jewry, who now accounted for about half of the Jews of the world. Furthermore, the survivors of the editorial board of the German Encyclopaedia Judaica had always been determined that the Nazi attack on their work could not be accepted as a final defeat and the unfinished publication must be completed. However, they too recognized that now only a relatively small proportion of the Jewish people had access to a work in German and that any new endeavor in this field must be, first and foremost, in English. Dr. Nahum Goldmann, the last active survivor of the original board of editors, had long had this objective.” [see also 1934 CE: PUBLICATION HALTED at “L”]