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The Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia
Quick reference sourcebook on everything Jewish.
- GenresJewish
303 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1998
7 people want to read
About the author
Mordecai Schreiber
22 books15 followersSee also works under his pen name Morry Sofer.
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February 5, 2026
A FINE REFERENCE WORK ON HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE AND TOPICS
The introductory page of this 1998 book explains, “the Publisher [decided] to thoroughly update and rewrite the ‘Junior Encyclopedia’ so that it could be used as a reference tool for all ages… This new adaptation---rich in information, illustrations, charts, and maps… does not lay any claims to full coverage of a culture and a history that requires many volumes... Instead, the editors have carefully selected the essential... and the most instructive, so that the reader may obtain some immediate information, use cross-references, and feel motivated to look for other sources of in-depth knowledge on any particular subject.” Here are some examples of the contents:
ANTI-SEMITISM: The hatred of Jews. The purpose of anti-Semitism ... is to degrade the Jews by removing their civil, political, social, economic, and religious rights, and finally, by exterminating them… The most potent piece of anti-Semitic literature … is undoubtedly the ‘Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’… Despite repeated public proof that they were forgeries, the circulation of the Protocols continued on a large scale...
APOCRYPHA: … a series of books written during the last centuries BCE and excluded from the Bible when the canon was set up ca. 90 CE… None of these books equals the Bible’s grandeur… and many of them were lost and forgotten by Jews. Some … were included by the early Church Fathers in the Catholic Bible.
ARAMAIC: A group of Semitic languages, known as Chaldaic in their most ancient form… since Aramaic was closely related to Hebrew, it was picked up by the Jewish exiles in Babylonia in the 6th century BCE…
ASHKENAZIM: Literally, Germans… Jews of Germany and northern France beginning the 10th century...
BABYLONIA: Ancient Asiatic land… In Babylonia, the exiles of Judah may have joined the lost ten tribes of Israel, who had been deported by the Assyrian kings two centuries earlier… After the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus, king of Persia (538 BCE), the Jews were permitted to return to Zion. Many joyfully seized the opportunity… but the majority of the exiles remained in their adopted land.
BALFOUR DECLARATION: … The three sentences of this [1917] document giving international recognition to Zionist aims were the result of three years of diplomatic negotiations...
CHOSEN PEOPLE: According to the Bible, God entered into a covenant with Abraham and his descendants, to be God’s servants and witnesses in the world. This concept has been distorted through the ages to mean that Jews regard themselves as …. superior to other people. In actual fact, this ‘chosenness’ puts a heavy burden on the Jewish people…
CRUSADES: (1096-1291) A series of Christian wars designed to free the Holy Land from Moslem rule. They were uniformly tragic in their effects upon the Jews.
DEAD SEA SCROLLS: Ancient biblical manuscripts discovered in [1947]… generally accepted… as dating from the 1st century BCE…
ENGLAND (UNITED KINGDOM): … in 1290… the entire Jewish community … was forced to take the weary path of exile… For the following 350 years, England had no Jewish community. The resettlement of Jews in England took place in 1656… in the throes of the Puritan Revolution…
ESSENES: Sect of pious, ascetic Jews during the time of the Second Temple… [The Dead Sea Scrolls] revealed a rich and valuable literature of sects similar to the Essenes.
HASIDISM: Religious movement which began in the 18th century… [which] encouraged a close bond among followers….Hasidism ... assumed various forms… Almost every form of artistic expression---the stage, music, dance---have used Hasidic themes and motifs.
HEAVEN AND HELL: In the Hebrew Bible there is little mention of life after death. Basically, life in ancient Israel was here and now, and posterity simply meant the perpetuation of life through one’s descendants… It is not until the post-biblical period that new beliefs in life after death begin to emerge…
HERZL, THEODOR (1860-1904): Founder of modern political Zionism… Fifty years after [he convened] the first Zionist congress, the State of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948.
HOLOCAUST: … The catastrophe that eventuated from the six years of Nazi conquest in Europe between 1939 and 1945 was unprecedented in suffering and death. The Jewish people lost more than 6 million people, or two-thirds of its European community, and one-third of the entire Jewish people… Many thinkers, both Jews and non-Jews, regard the Holocaust as the turning point in the moral history of the world. On the other hand, there are writers, professors, or hate-mongers … who spread theories denying or minimizing the Holocaust…
INQUISITION: The special courts set up by the Catholic Church to check the spread of heretical opinion… this agency came to be directed mainly at ferreting out the Marranos, Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity and were found secretly observing the practices of Judaism.
ISLAM:… [T]he faith of Mohammed is closer to Judaism than to Christianity… The position of Jews has been more favorable under Islam than under Christian rule...
ISRAEL, STATE OF:… The proclamation of the State of Israel marked the climax of a half century of political Zionism that sought to reunite the scattered Jewish people with its ancient ‘promised land.’ ...
JESUS: Galilean Jew who lived in the beginning of the common era… While Jesus himself did not found a religion, but rather lived and died a Jew, the stories about him… were compelling enough to give rise to … Christianity…
JOSEPHUS FLAVIUS (ca. 37-105) Soldier and historian… The books of Josephus have survived, and serve as the only source of knowledge for a good part of the Jewish history of that period.
JUDAISM: Judaism is based on the Bible, each age reinterpreting and redefining biblical laws… Judaism … was always more concerned with the practice of the commandments regulating human’s relations with each other and with God.
KABBALAH:… Jewish mysticism. In an attempt to fathom the mysteries of God and Creation, the Kabbalists developed a complete philosophic system during the Middle Ages…
KARAITES: Jewish sect founded in the late 8th century … [that] rejected the rabbinic tradition of Talmludic law and based its religious life on the literal interpretation of the Bible.
KHAZARS: People of Turkish origin who lived in southern Russia… The story of the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism has been interpreted variously. Some scholars call it a fable; others claim that only the ruling class adopted Judaism.
LOST TRIBES: Ten tribes that composed the Kingdom of Israel… the Assyrian Empire … in 722 BCE led most of the population into exile. Ever since then, the ultimate fate of these exiles has been the subject of innumerable theories and legends… One [opinion] maintains that the ten tribes were assimilated with the populations among which they lived. Another opinion holds that they survived and joined the exiles from Judea in 6th century BCE who returned to their homeland in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.
MAIMONIDES (1135-1204): Jewish philosopher, religious thinker, and physician. Few have attained the heights of thought and scholarship scaled by Maimonides, also known as Moses ben Maimon, or Rambam...
MASADA: Ancient fortress in the Judean wilderness, famed for the last stand of the Zealots in the war against the Romans in 70 CE.
MESSIANISM: The belief that Jewish people and all humanity would be led to a golden age of perfect justice and universal peace by a messiah, an ideal king and a perfect man… During the long centuries of exile, the Jewish people continued to dream of the messiah and the return to Israel.
PALESTINE: … [It] was called Palestine by the Greeks and Romans, after the Philistines who live in the… region.
PHARISEES:… One of the three parties in Palestine during the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. Most of rabbinic law as it exists today originated with the Pharisees, who prized the study of Jewish law as it developed…
PHILO (30 BCE-40 CE) Hellenistic philosopher and Biblical interpreter… His idea of the ‘Logos,’ or the Word, greatly influenced the Fathers of the Christian Church and indirectly Jewish mystical thought.
RASHI (1040-1105): … a preeminent Biblical and Talmudic commentator. His commentaries are indispensable to the study of the Bible and the Talmud.
ROTHSCHILD, HOUSE OF:… a banking establishment with enormous assets and branches in several financial centers… Their influence was enormous. By refusing loans to warlike governments they could help to prevent the outbreak of war…
SACRIFICES: Offerings to a deity… Although Jews have not offered sacrifices since the destruction of the Second Temple, Orthodox Jews have always prayed that sacrifices will be restored with the coming of the Messiah and rebuilding of the Temple in Zion.
SADDUCEES: Second largest religious and political party in Palestine during the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. Its members are believed to have been the followers of high priests…
SAMARITANS:… When the Israelite kingdom Samaria fell in 722 BCE… Samaria was then resettled by ... varied Semitic groups… The Samaritans were anxious to join the Jewish group. However, conflict developed. Jews who returned to Palestine from Babylonian captivity refused to accept the offer of the Samaritans to help rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem because of the differences in religious practices… [The Samaritans were] hurt by this refusal of cooperation…
SATAN:… Satan … is not the supreme evil force of the universe he became later in Jewish tradition … Rather, he is part of the divine entourage of good and bad angels…
SEPHARDIM: … Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin… Expelled from Spain by the Inquisition in 1492, the Sephardim scattered… When Zionists began to migrate to Palestine at the close of the 19th century, they adopted the Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew…
SYNAGOGUE: … The synagogue can be traced back to the period following the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. The exiled Jews in Babylonia gathered… in special buildings to read from the Scriptures and observe holidays… Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the synagogue assumed a central place in Jewish religious and communal life…
TALMUD:… Legal code whose compilation spans almost 1,000 years… [and] interprets biblical laws and commandments… The Talmud is composed of two basic divisions: the Mishnah and the Gemara. The Mishnah is the interpretation … as handed down over time… The Gemara represents commentary on the Mishnah.
YIDDISH: Language spoken by East European Jewry, approximately 1,000 years old… Yiddish is the creation of Ashkenazic Jewry.
ZIONISM: Modern political movement for the return of the Jewish people to Zion, an old prophetic name for Palestine. This movement… was followed by the founding of several Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine.
ZOHAR:… The holiest book of the Kabbalah… The Zohar dwells on the mystery of Creation and explains the stories and events in the Bible in a symbolic manner..
This is an EXCELLENT reference source, for anyone studying Judaism and Jewish history.
The introductory page of this 1998 book explains, “the Publisher [decided] to thoroughly update and rewrite the ‘Junior Encyclopedia’ so that it could be used as a reference tool for all ages… This new adaptation---rich in information, illustrations, charts, and maps… does not lay any claims to full coverage of a culture and a history that requires many volumes... Instead, the editors have carefully selected the essential... and the most instructive, so that the reader may obtain some immediate information, use cross-references, and feel motivated to look for other sources of in-depth knowledge on any particular subject.” Here are some examples of the contents:
ANTI-SEMITISM: The hatred of Jews. The purpose of anti-Semitism ... is to degrade the Jews by removing their civil, political, social, economic, and religious rights, and finally, by exterminating them… The most potent piece of anti-Semitic literature … is undoubtedly the ‘Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’… Despite repeated public proof that they were forgeries, the circulation of the Protocols continued on a large scale...
APOCRYPHA: … a series of books written during the last centuries BCE and excluded from the Bible when the canon was set up ca. 90 CE… None of these books equals the Bible’s grandeur… and many of them were lost and forgotten by Jews. Some … were included by the early Church Fathers in the Catholic Bible.
ARAMAIC: A group of Semitic languages, known as Chaldaic in their most ancient form… since Aramaic was closely related to Hebrew, it was picked up by the Jewish exiles in Babylonia in the 6th century BCE…
ASHKENAZIM: Literally, Germans… Jews of Germany and northern France beginning the 10th century...
BABYLONIA: Ancient Asiatic land… In Babylonia, the exiles of Judah may have joined the lost ten tribes of Israel, who had been deported by the Assyrian kings two centuries earlier… After the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus, king of Persia (538 BCE), the Jews were permitted to return to Zion. Many joyfully seized the opportunity… but the majority of the exiles remained in their adopted land.
BALFOUR DECLARATION: … The three sentences of this [1917] document giving international recognition to Zionist aims were the result of three years of diplomatic negotiations...
CHOSEN PEOPLE: According to the Bible, God entered into a covenant with Abraham and his descendants, to be God’s servants and witnesses in the world. This concept has been distorted through the ages to mean that Jews regard themselves as …. superior to other people. In actual fact, this ‘chosenness’ puts a heavy burden on the Jewish people…
CRUSADES: (1096-1291) A series of Christian wars designed to free the Holy Land from Moslem rule. They were uniformly tragic in their effects upon the Jews.
DEAD SEA SCROLLS: Ancient biblical manuscripts discovered in [1947]… generally accepted… as dating from the 1st century BCE…
ENGLAND (UNITED KINGDOM): … in 1290… the entire Jewish community … was forced to take the weary path of exile… For the following 350 years, England had no Jewish community. The resettlement of Jews in England took place in 1656… in the throes of the Puritan Revolution…
ESSENES: Sect of pious, ascetic Jews during the time of the Second Temple… [The Dead Sea Scrolls] revealed a rich and valuable literature of sects similar to the Essenes.
HASIDISM: Religious movement which began in the 18th century… [which] encouraged a close bond among followers….Hasidism ... assumed various forms… Almost every form of artistic expression---the stage, music, dance---have used Hasidic themes and motifs.
HEAVEN AND HELL: In the Hebrew Bible there is little mention of life after death. Basically, life in ancient Israel was here and now, and posterity simply meant the perpetuation of life through one’s descendants… It is not until the post-biblical period that new beliefs in life after death begin to emerge…
HERZL, THEODOR (1860-1904): Founder of modern political Zionism… Fifty years after [he convened] the first Zionist congress, the State of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948.
HOLOCAUST: … The catastrophe that eventuated from the six years of Nazi conquest in Europe between 1939 and 1945 was unprecedented in suffering and death. The Jewish people lost more than 6 million people, or two-thirds of its European community, and one-third of the entire Jewish people… Many thinkers, both Jews and non-Jews, regard the Holocaust as the turning point in the moral history of the world. On the other hand, there are writers, professors, or hate-mongers … who spread theories denying or minimizing the Holocaust…
INQUISITION: The special courts set up by the Catholic Church to check the spread of heretical opinion… this agency came to be directed mainly at ferreting out the Marranos, Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity and were found secretly observing the practices of Judaism.
ISLAM:… [T]he faith of Mohammed is closer to Judaism than to Christianity… The position of Jews has been more favorable under Islam than under Christian rule...
ISRAEL, STATE OF:… The proclamation of the State of Israel marked the climax of a half century of political Zionism that sought to reunite the scattered Jewish people with its ancient ‘promised land.’ ...
JESUS: Galilean Jew who lived in the beginning of the common era… While Jesus himself did not found a religion, but rather lived and died a Jew, the stories about him… were compelling enough to give rise to … Christianity…
JOSEPHUS FLAVIUS (ca. 37-105) Soldier and historian… The books of Josephus have survived, and serve as the only source of knowledge for a good part of the Jewish history of that period.
JUDAISM: Judaism is based on the Bible, each age reinterpreting and redefining biblical laws… Judaism … was always more concerned with the practice of the commandments regulating human’s relations with each other and with God.
KABBALAH:… Jewish mysticism. In an attempt to fathom the mysteries of God and Creation, the Kabbalists developed a complete philosophic system during the Middle Ages…
KARAITES: Jewish sect founded in the late 8th century … [that] rejected the rabbinic tradition of Talmludic law and based its religious life on the literal interpretation of the Bible.
KHAZARS: People of Turkish origin who lived in southern Russia… The story of the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism has been interpreted variously. Some scholars call it a fable; others claim that only the ruling class adopted Judaism.
LOST TRIBES: Ten tribes that composed the Kingdom of Israel… the Assyrian Empire … in 722 BCE led most of the population into exile. Ever since then, the ultimate fate of these exiles has been the subject of innumerable theories and legends… One [opinion] maintains that the ten tribes were assimilated with the populations among which they lived. Another opinion holds that they survived and joined the exiles from Judea in 6th century BCE who returned to their homeland in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.
MAIMONIDES (1135-1204): Jewish philosopher, religious thinker, and physician. Few have attained the heights of thought and scholarship scaled by Maimonides, also known as Moses ben Maimon, or Rambam...
MASADA: Ancient fortress in the Judean wilderness, famed for the last stand of the Zealots in the war against the Romans in 70 CE.
MESSIANISM: The belief that Jewish people and all humanity would be led to a golden age of perfect justice and universal peace by a messiah, an ideal king and a perfect man… During the long centuries of exile, the Jewish people continued to dream of the messiah and the return to Israel.
PALESTINE: … [It] was called Palestine by the Greeks and Romans, after the Philistines who live in the… region.
PHARISEES:… One of the three parties in Palestine during the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. Most of rabbinic law as it exists today originated with the Pharisees, who prized the study of Jewish law as it developed…
PHILO (30 BCE-40 CE) Hellenistic philosopher and Biblical interpreter… His idea of the ‘Logos,’ or the Word, greatly influenced the Fathers of the Christian Church and indirectly Jewish mystical thought.
RASHI (1040-1105): … a preeminent Biblical and Talmudic commentator. His commentaries are indispensable to the study of the Bible and the Talmud.
ROTHSCHILD, HOUSE OF:… a banking establishment with enormous assets and branches in several financial centers… Their influence was enormous. By refusing loans to warlike governments they could help to prevent the outbreak of war…
SACRIFICES: Offerings to a deity… Although Jews have not offered sacrifices since the destruction of the Second Temple, Orthodox Jews have always prayed that sacrifices will be restored with the coming of the Messiah and rebuilding of the Temple in Zion.
SADDUCEES: Second largest religious and political party in Palestine during the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. Its members are believed to have been the followers of high priests…
SAMARITANS:… When the Israelite kingdom Samaria fell in 722 BCE… Samaria was then resettled by ... varied Semitic groups… The Samaritans were anxious to join the Jewish group. However, conflict developed. Jews who returned to Palestine from Babylonian captivity refused to accept the offer of the Samaritans to help rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem because of the differences in religious practices… [The Samaritans were] hurt by this refusal of cooperation…
SATAN:… Satan … is not the supreme evil force of the universe he became later in Jewish tradition … Rather, he is part of the divine entourage of good and bad angels…
SEPHARDIM: … Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin… Expelled from Spain by the Inquisition in 1492, the Sephardim scattered… When Zionists began to migrate to Palestine at the close of the 19th century, they adopted the Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew…
SYNAGOGUE: … The synagogue can be traced back to the period following the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. The exiled Jews in Babylonia gathered… in special buildings to read from the Scriptures and observe holidays… Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the synagogue assumed a central place in Jewish religious and communal life…
TALMUD:… Legal code whose compilation spans almost 1,000 years… [and] interprets biblical laws and commandments… The Talmud is composed of two basic divisions: the Mishnah and the Gemara. The Mishnah is the interpretation … as handed down over time… The Gemara represents commentary on the Mishnah.
YIDDISH: Language spoken by East European Jewry, approximately 1,000 years old… Yiddish is the creation of Ashkenazic Jewry.
ZIONISM: Modern political movement for the return of the Jewish people to Zion, an old prophetic name for Palestine. This movement… was followed by the founding of several Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine.
ZOHAR:… The holiest book of the Kabbalah… The Zohar dwells on the mystery of Creation and explains the stories and events in the Bible in a symbolic manner..
This is an EXCELLENT reference source, for anyone studying Judaism and Jewish history.
April 16, 2019
My boyfriend's 9-year-old daughter lent me this so I could get a brief history of the Jewish people (they're Jewish, I'm not). It was a mile wide and an inch thick, which is to say they did a great job of covering all of recorded history in bite size chunks in a 300-page book. It was very informative and a good place to start. There were some typos, though, which was unfortunate.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews