The Hebrew Standard (New York City) (July 22, 1904)
LITERARY.
"The Jewish Encyclopedia Vol. VII," the history,religion, literature and customs of the Jewish people from earliest times to the present day. Isadore Singer, Ph. D., projector and managing editor. New York; Fung & Wagnails company.
For the seventh time like experienced mariners, the editors of that good ship, "The Jewish Encyclopedia," are taking their readers on a historical, literary and archeological expedition around the world. It is not a hurried round-trip with hasty visits to a dozen or more of maritime towns, but a thorough scientific voyage with more or less protracted stoppages at the thousands on thousands of stations of the Wandering Jew throughout the world, and throughout the ages— stations alternately marking Israel's deeds, thoughts and suffering. To specify the first stages of the journey which the reader, as though a passenger aboard ship, travels in this volume. From Italy he goes to the Russia of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to make the acquaintance of Ivan III. and Ivan IV.; from Russia he Is led to the Philistine city Jabneh, the religious and national center of the Jews after the destruction of Jerusalem. Thence he goes to the British West Indies to learn the story of the development of the Jewish community of Jamaica from 1655 to 1904, and, as if one could not travel over Israel's ground without passing through a valley of tears, retraces his steps to reach Jassy, one of the capitals of Roumania, to whose 250,000 Jews the government of Roumania, notwithstanding Its solemn engagements at the Berlin congress (1878) and recent remonstrances from Washington, persistently refuses the rights of citizenship.
By December 31, 1905, when the last of the twelve volumes containing the story of these excursions will have been issued from the press the world will possess for the first time the life story of Israel among the nations, and, perhaps, one of the most interesting contributions to the history of the civilization of mankind.
The attractiveness and literary importance of the successive volumes of an encyclopedia depend upon the chances of its contents as governed by the alphabetical order. While every one of the six volumes of "The Jewish Encyclopedia" already issued has been pronounced a mine of interesting and instructive material, no effort has been spared that would make the seventh volume a fitting companion to its predecessors. The range of its topics— nearly 18,000 in number — extends from "ltaly" to "Leon," and includes several dozen masterly essays on the fundamental topics of Jewish literature, history, and religion contributed by no less than one hundred and seventy-five scholars and specialists. It is embellished by nearly one hundred and fifty illustrations, the most notable of which are a frontispiece map of Jerusalem in five separate prints, each representing a different epoch in the life of the city and an elaborate panoramic view of the Jerusalem of today.
To follow the Wandering Jew over oceans and across continents, to study his economic, social and spiritual life in market, home, synagogue and school house, is one of the main purposes of "The Jewish Encyclopedia,” and the panorama of Israel’s variegated activities throughout the ages which this work unfolds before our eyes can be justly called one of the greatest achievements of contemporaneous historical literature.