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The EJ: How good is it really?
The online Encyclopaedia Judaica (EJ) debuts at a time when the future of encyclopedias is in doubt. Priced just under $2,000, the online EJ must compete with free resources like Wikipedia, the Jewish Virtual Library, and the Jewish Encyclopedia (which many consider superior to the EJ, although it has not been updated since 1906).
Conventional wisdom among the library-science set is that, with a few exceptions, the reliability and veracity of online resources are inferior to those produced by well-known publishers and vetted by experts. “One can rely more on the EJ than on something like Wikipedia,” says Jean Lettofsky, librarian at Siegal College, because the EJ’s entries are “scholarly articles,” written by experts who have consciously attempted “to avoid having a slant.”
Controversies
Still, no one’s perfect. There were well-known errors and omissions in 1972, like the entry on chess player Bobby Fischer, who, despite his well-known anti-Semitism, had a Jewish grandparent. After the 1972 edition was published, Fischer wrote to the editors:
“Knowing what I do about Judaism, I was naturally distressed to see that you have erroneously featured me as a Jew in Encyclopaedia Judaica. Please do not make this mistake again in any future editions of your voluminous, pseudo-authoritative publication. I am not today, nor have I ever been a Jew, and as a matter of fact, I am uncircumcised.”
Fischer has been dropped from the second edition.
EJ’s reputation as the authority on all things Jewish depends in part on the reputation of its contributors, which include scholars like Jonathan Sarna and David Sperling. Still, there are bound to be errors that come to light over time.
One minor controversy that has already surfaced concerns Sperling’s entry on Moses. Sperling suggests that Moses may not have existed: “We cannot really reconstruct a biography of Moses. We cannot even be sure that Moses was a historical character.”
Although Sperling’s assertions are not revolutionary by the standards of Reform and Conservative Judaism, this apparent denial of Moses poses a serious problem for Orthodox Jews, who view Moses as a real person who wrote down the Bible’s first five books. Online readers of the AP story have condemned Sperling’s entry as blasphemous. In the words of one reader, “The denial of Moses is tantamount to a denial of the authenticity of the Torah.”
The online experience
There are many facets to a good encyclopedia, including scope, accuracy, currency, and what people in information sciences call “accessibility,” that is, how easy or difficult it is to find what you’re looking for.
Print books have a decided advantage in terms of accessibility over online books by virtue of their design. With the former, there is no format easier to browse n you simply flip through the pages. In the case of an encyclopedia, the body of the book n the entries n are already arranged in alphabetical order, and a good index can bring any cross-references to the reader’s attention.
Online books have no physical sections, no pages to turn, no corners to dog-ear. To find what you need in an online book, you need an interface n a navigation system designed by people who have thought about what users will be looking for and how best to reach what they need.
The interface on the online EJ is a disappointment in this regard. It provides a table of contents, index, a list of illustrations, and a key word search function. To get to individual entries from the table of contents requires multiple clicks and much scanning of entry lists.
Cleveland
A keyword search for Cleveland produced 71 results, primarily biographies. Several of the entries were for people who were born here but whose achievements have very little to do with Cleveland (for example, Sally Priesand, the first female rabbi, and Judith Butler, philosopher).
The entry on Cleveland is written by Jane Avner, formerly associate curator of Jewish history at The Western Reserve Historical Society. She knows her stuff. The Cleveland article is tightly written and dense with interesting information.
The entry is heavy on the history of organizations, demographic trends, and cursory bios of notable men, primarily rabbis, successful businessmen, and philanthropists. Entries on women were in short supply.
Every piece of information in Avner’s entry could be easily retrieved from some other source, many of them online (the entry on Progressive Insurance board chair Peter Lewis relies heavily on a CJN interview with editor Cynthia Dettelbach). But that’s sort of the point of an encyclopedia n to provide basic knowledge on a broad range of topics.
“In general, encyclopedia articles are somewhat superficial,” says Lettofsky. Her advice to researchers is to “use them to start your journey,” but don’t plan to linger there.
L.H.
Conventional wisdom among the library-science set is that, with a few exceptions, the reliability and veracity of online resources are inferior to those produced by well-known publishers and vetted by experts. “One can rely more on the EJ than on something like Wikipedia,” says Jean Lettofsky, librarian at Siegal College, because the EJ’s entries are “scholarly articles,” written by experts who have consciously attempted “to avoid having a slant.”
Controversies
Still, no one’s perfect. There were well-known errors and omissions in 1972, like the entry on chess player Bobby Fischer, who, despite his well-known anti-Semitism, had a Jewish grandparent. After the 1972 edition was published, Fischer wrote to the editors:
“Knowing what I do about Judaism, I was naturally distressed to see that you have erroneously featured me as a Jew in Encyclopaedia Judaica. Please do not make this mistake again in any future editions of your voluminous, pseudo-authoritative publication. I am not today, nor have I ever been a Jew, and as a matter of fact, I am uncircumcised.”
Fischer has been dropped from the second edition.
EJ’s reputation as the authority on all things Jewish depends in part on the reputation of its contributors, which include scholars like Jonathan Sarna and David Sperling. Still, there are bound to be errors that come to light over time.
One minor controversy that has already surfaced concerns Sperling’s entry on Moses. Sperling suggests that Moses may not have existed: “We cannot really reconstruct a biography of Moses. We cannot even be sure that Moses was a historical character.”
Although Sperling’s assertions are not revolutionary by the standards of Reform and Conservative Judaism, this apparent denial of Moses poses a serious problem for Orthodox Jews, who view Moses as a real person who wrote down the Bible’s first five books. Online readers of the AP story have condemned Sperling’s entry as blasphemous. In the words of one reader, “The denial of Moses is tantamount to a denial of the authenticity of the Torah.”
The online experience
There are many facets to a good encyclopedia, including scope, accuracy, currency, and what people in information sciences call “accessibility,” that is, how easy or difficult it is to find what you’re looking for.
Print books have a decided advantage in terms of accessibility over online books by virtue of their design. With the former, there is no format easier to browse n you simply flip through the pages. In the case of an encyclopedia, the body of the book n the entries n are already arranged in alphabetical order, and a good index can bring any cross-references to the reader’s attention.
Online books have no physical sections, no pages to turn, no corners to dog-ear. To find what you need in an online book, you need an interface n a navigation system designed by people who have thought about what users will be looking for and how best to reach what they need.
The interface on the online EJ is a disappointment in this regard. It provides a table of contents, index, a list of illustrations, and a key word search function. To get to individual entries from the table of contents requires multiple clicks and much scanning of entry lists.
Cleveland
A keyword search for Cleveland produced 71 results, primarily biographies. Several of the entries were for people who were born here but whose achievements have very little to do with Cleveland (for example, Sally Priesand, the first female rabbi, and Judith Butler, philosopher).
The entry on Cleveland is written by Jane Avner, formerly associate curator of Jewish history at The Western Reserve Historical Society. She knows her stuff. The Cleveland article is tightly written and dense with interesting information.
The entry is heavy on the history of organizations, demographic trends, and cursory bios of notable men, primarily rabbis, successful businessmen, and philanthropists. Entries on women were in short supply.
Every piece of information in Avner’s entry could be easily retrieved from some other source, many of them online (the entry on Progressive Insurance board chair Peter Lewis relies heavily on a CJN interview with editor Cynthia Dettelbach). But that’s sort of the point of an encyclopedia n to provide basic knowledge on a broad range of topics.
“In general, encyclopedia articles are somewhat superficial,” says Lettofsky. Her advice to researchers is to “use them to start your journey,” but don’t plan to linger there.
L.H.
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