Volume 17

Arsenale jüdischen Wissens

Within the span of three decades, several Jewish encyclopedias appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century in Europe and North America. The present study focuses on the German-language »Encyclopaedia Judaica« published in Berlin between 1928 and 1934. It was the result of concerted efforts by Jewish publicists, scholars and politicians from several countries and cultures. They familiarized themselves with the programs and conceptions of existing encyclopedias and elaborated them further.

Arndt Engelhardt sketches the development of Jewish cultures of knowledge in the nineteenth and twentieth century, looking in depth at the genesis and history of the »Encyclopaedia Judaica.« He analyzes and interprets this encyclopedic undertaking as a strategy to form a new kind of canon of Jewish culture and science in modernity against the backdrop of events in the inter-war period.