The Dubnow Fund, which was started last year to commemorate the seventieth birthday of the great Jewish historian, Professor Simeon Dubnow by publishing a ten-volume General Encyclopedia in Yiddish, has this week published a brochure consisting of specimen sheets of the projected Encylopaedia, and a meeting has been held at the Shalom Aleichem Club here to celebrate the event.
Dr. Jacob Lestschinsky, who was in the chair, said that the publication of the specimen sheets was a festival of Yiddish culture, symbolising the advance that Yiddish cultural activity had made. 20 years ago such a venture would have been doomed to failure. But in the last two decades, an army of Yiddish writers and scholars had grown up, who were working in all branches of literature, art and science, and contributing in the Yiddish language to modern culture. The specimen sheets of their Yiddish Encyclopaedia could compare on their own level with the best examples of European encyclopaedias.
Mr. Raphael Abramovitch, the leader of the Russian Social Democratic Party, one of the founders of the Jewish Socialist Party, Bund, and a member of the Executive of the Second Labour and Socialist International, delivered an address on the educational value of Encyclopaedias in general, and the need of a general encyclopaedia in Yiddish for the Yiddish-speaking masses.
The Yiddish Encyclopaedia, Mr. Abramovitch said, will consist of 10 large volumes, containing about 5,000 double-column pages, and about 25 million letters, thousands of illustrations, diagrams, maps, and reproductions, etc. Mr. Abrahamovitch concluded with an appeal to the Jewish press, Jewish public opinion and all people who regard the furtherance of culture among the Jewish people in the Yiddish language as an important air to help to make the Yiddish Encyclopaedia a real production of the Jewish people and the Jewish genius.
Dr. E. Tcherikower, spoke on behalf of the Vilna Yiddish Scientific Institute, Dr. D. Lvovitch, for the O.R.T., and Dr. Tcharii### for the Yiddish P.E.N. Club.
Dr. M. Wischnitzer, the Secretary of the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, who also addressed the gathering, said speaking as a contributor to many general and Jewish encyclopaedias, their specimen publication showed that the Yiddish Encyclopaedia would be a standard work, equal to the great European encyclopaedias.
Professor Dubnow sent a letter to the meeting, expressing his regret that his state of health did not allow him to leave the house to join them in celebrating the beginning of a great achievement. He hoped that they would very soon have the first volume of the Encyclopaedia completed, and that in a few years time the whole of the ten volumes would be in their hands.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
