Dr. Nahum Goldmann, speaking in his capacity as president of the Encyclopedia Judaica, announced today that a ten-volume Jewish encyclopedia, in English, would be ready within four to five years. The publication will be a cooperative venture of the Israeli Hadassah Publishing House, the Palestine Economic Corporation, which undertook financial responsibility.
Dr. Goldmann said that many years had passed and many developments had taken place since the last complete Encyclopedia Judaica was published in the English language. Representatives of Hadassah and the PEC said the new encyclopedia would be based to a large extent on the archives of the German edition of a Jewish encyclopedia published in Berlin by the Eshkol Company with the participation of Dr. Goldmann. The archives were buried in hidden trunks and survived the Nazi regime. Taken to Israel, they were studied and various items brought up to date by a group of scholars headed by an editorial board of which Dr. Abraham Neumann of Dropsie College and Prof. Ben-Zion Dinur of Jerusalem are co-chairmen.
Dr. Ben-Zion Nethanyahu, also of Dropsie College, is editor-in-chief of the new encyclopedia. Prof. William Albright is chairman of the editorial council and Dr. William Bridgewater of the Columbia Encyclopedia will be the style editor of the encyclopedia. Some 400 scholars will contribute to the new work.
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.
