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Di Algemeyne Entsiklopedye (Yiddish: די אלגעמיינע ענציקלאפעדיע, lit. 'The General Encyclopedia') is a Yiddish-language encyclopedia published in twelve volumes from 1934 to 1966. After calls for a Yiddish language encyclopedia grew in the 1920s and early 1930s, the YIVO central committee organized the Dubnow Fund in Berlin alongside various Jewish intellectuals for work on the encyclopedia. Scholar and politician Raphael Abramovitch served as the project's chief editor for most of its existence. After progress was delayed after several early rifts and setbacks, the editorial staff fled to Paris to continue work on the project, where the first four volumes were released, alongside the first volume of the Yidn supplement, focused on Jewish culture. World War II led the team to flee again, settling in New York City, where all other volumes would be published. As much of the Yiddish-speaking community was killed during the Holocaust, the encyclopedia became increasingly focused on commemorating and memorializing Jewish culture and history, with the Yidn series becoming the primary focus. Although funds from the Claims Conference after the war allowed work to continue into the 1960s, progress halted shortly after Abramovitch's death in 1963.

History and publication

With the rise of national encyclopedias such as the Encyclopædia Britannica in the 18th and 19th centuries, some Jewish intellectuals and scholars envisioned encyclopedias to cover the history and culture of the Jewish people. Works such as the Britannica (whose articles on Jewish topics were primarily written by Jewish converts to Christianity) were seen as inadequate and biased. After several projects failed in the preceding decades, the first published Jewish encyclopedia was Isidore Singer's English-language Jewish Encyclopedia, published in 1901–1906. It was followed by the Russian Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia in 1908–1913 and the Hebrew Otsar Yisrael in 1906–1913.

Berlin

In March 1930, the editor Nakhmen Meisel published a call for a "great Yiddish encyclopedia" in the literary weekly Literarishe Bleter, arguing that the success of the YIVO, a major Yiddish academic institute, could lay the groundwork for a general-purpose Jewish encyclopedia where previous attempts had failed. Later, the YIVO central committee launched the Dubnow Fund (Dubnov-fond) in Berlin to organize and raise funds for the encyclopedia, naming the organization for Simon Dubnow, a historian who served as an editor for both the Jewish Encyclopedia and the Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia. YIVO co-founder Elias Tcherikower was named the head of the working group, while Moshe Shalit outlined a detailed proposal for the encyclopedia.

A February 1931 meeting of various prominent Jewish intellectuals in Berlin (including Meisel, Dubnow, Tcherikower, and Shalit) convened to evaluate the plans for the encyclopedia. This group agreed that the encyclopedia would include ten volumes on general knowledge, with one volume reserved for Jewish topics. They predicted that the work would take six or seven years to finish, estimating a rate of two volumes per year. While the Vilna-based VIYO would administrate the project, while the Dunbow Fund would manage day-to-day operations. At the behest of Shalit, it was agreed that only Jewish writers would be allowed to contribute.

The former Menshevik and Bund organizer Raphael Abramovitch was named the chief organizer of the project. Despite intense political and organizational rifts over its development, a 36-page probeheft (sample volume), containing 56 entries, was released and distributed to supporters of the project in 1932. It predicted the final project would consist of 5000 double-sided pages and 25 million characters, with 40,000 search terms ranging from lengthy articles to short descriptions and translations.

Paris

In 1933, the rise of Adolf Hitler's regime in Germany forced the editors of the encyclopedia to flee the country. Many regrouped in Paris, although other contributors had gone to various other countries across Europe. Although the organizers had enough material written for the first two volumes, it was forced by financial difficulties to delay the release of the first volume to December 1934. To reduce publication costs, the encyclopedia was reorganized into twenty smaller volumes, with the last predicted to release in 1941.

Although the fund predicted four volumes per year, only one was released every year from 1934 to 1937. In 1939, the Yidn supplementary volume was released, stated as an "enlightening of the sum of Jewish problems that matter to the day-to-day Jewish man and which he can find in no other place". The volume featured material covering Jewish organizations, statistics, and history. A second volume of the supplement was announced, which would cover cultural and religious topics.

New York City

The outbreak of World War II again forced editors to flee in 1940, immediately after the second volume of the Yidn was published. Most copies of this volume were lost — possibly due to a German U-Boat on the ship carrying them — but a small number arrived in the United States and Canada and were reprinted. Many editor sand contributors settled in New York City, with organizational and publishing work carried on by the Central Yiddish Culture Organization. Many contributors still in Europe were killed over the following years, including Dubonov and linguist Noach Pryłucki. With the mass destruction of Jewish culture and the Yiddish language in Europe due to the Holocaust, the organizers of the encyclopedia placed increasing focus on covering Jewish culture and history for future generations.

A third volume of the Yidn supplement, entitled Yidn: gimel was published in 1942, followed by another installment of the "normal" series in 1944. This would be the last such volume; the dwindling editorial corps (multiple editors, including Tcherikower, had died in New York) and the mass genocide of the encyclopedia's readership forced an increasing turn away from general knowledge towards fully capturing Jewish culture, religion, and history.

Following the war, focus shifted towards a four-volume English version of the encyclopedia entitled Jewish People: Past and Present, which had been initially conceived before the war. This version, although heavily based off the first three Yidn volumes, was not a direct translation. Its main editors included historian Salo W. Baron and Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan.

The first postwar volume of the Yiddish edition was released in 1950. Financed by the Claims Conference, three more followed, released in 1957, 1964, and 1966. Abramowitz died in 1963, and administration of the project passed to Iser Goldberg. Two additional volumes — a sixth volume of the general series and a supplement on Israel — were planned but never finished.

Reception

Critical reception to the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye in the Yiddish press began after the publication of its probeheft in 1932. Poet Daniel Charney wrote positively of the sample, writing in a New York literary magazine Yidish "If the forthcoming Yiddish encyclopedia will indeed have this elegant an appearance we will really not have anything to be ashamed of in comparison to the other nations of the world".

References

1. Veidlinger 2009, pp. 379–380.
2. Trachtenberg 2006, p. 286.
3. Trachtenberg 2022, pp. 10–15.
4. Trachtenberg 2022, pp. 31–33.
5. Trachtenberg 2022, pp. 20, 33–34.
6. Trachtenberg 2022, p. 35, 43–44.
7. Trachtenberg 2022, pp. 46–50.
8. Trachtenberg 2006, pp. 287–288.
9. Trachtenberg 2022, pp. 57–58.
10. ^ Trachtenberg 2006, pp. 289–292.
11. Trachtenberg 2006, pp. 292–293.
12. Trachtenberg 2006, pp. 291, 294–295.
13. Trachtenberg 2006, pp. 295–296.
14. Trachtenberg 2006, pp. 296–297.
15. Trachtenberg 2022, p. 65.

Bibliography

• Trachtenberg, Barry (2006). "From Edification to Commemoration: Di Algemeyne Entsiklopedye, the Holocaust, and the Changing Mission of Yiddish Scholarship". Journal of Modern Jewish Studies. 5 (3): 285–300. doi:10.1080/14725880600961601.
• Trachtenberg, Barry (2022). The Holocaust and the Exile of Yiddish: A History of the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9781978825451.
• Veidlinger, Jeffery (2009). "From Ashkenaz to Zionism: Putting Eastern European Jewish Life in (Alphabetical) Order". AJS Review. 33 (2): 379–389. doi:10.1017/S0364009409990250.

• Yiddish-language literature
• European encyclopedias
• American encyclopedias