Open up this book to the “W” section and you will find the following entries listed across several pages: “Wandering Jew,” “Wedding (See: Marriage),” “Western Wall,” “Women in Rabbinic Literature,” “Wonder Tale,” and “World to Come (Olam Ha’ba).” This random and representative sample from the Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions illustrates the exceptional contribution that this new text makes to the fields of folklore and Jewish Studies, and, specifically, Jewish folklore. The late Professor Raphael Patai initiated this encyclopedia project, building a framework for its now successful completion by Professor Haya Bar-Itzhak at the University of Haifa, Israel. Under the editorship of these two esteemed scholars of Jewish folklore and anthropology, this two-volume text includes over 250 entries in an A-to-Z table of contents that covers classic literature, folktales, proverbs, riddles, parables, jokes, folk music, folksong, folk art, costume, food and foodways, ceremonial and ritual objects, magic, folk medicine, belief, customs, and folklore centered on the Jewish year-cycle and lifecycle. The scope of content achieved in this encyclopedia through the wide range of Jewish folklore genres, international organizations, and key scholars solidifies it as a new base from which to understand the breadth and depth of Jewish histories and folk cultures.
Comprehensive coverage of all Jewish traditions is impossible to present due to the dispersion of the Jews and the multilingual nature of Jewish culture; however, the editors note that these two factors, along with the primacy of written texts in Jewish tradition, have made Jewish folklore distinct and dynamic (xiii). This encyclopedia project therefore extends internationally and includes Jewish folklore across audio-oral, visual, and cognitive categories. Some of the major themes that the editors acknowledge as useful in categorizing the entries focus on the relationship between Jewish peoples and place, both imaginary and real, on significant historical events such as the Holocaust, on movements such as the kibbutz settlement, and on the history of Jewish folklore scholarship itself.
In addition to the two primary editors, the encyclopedia was compiled with the support of an editorial board consisting of ten scholars from Israel and the United States, including the late Dov Noy, founder of the Israeli Folktale Archives at Haifa University; and it includes contributions from over 100 authors from Israel and the United States, as well several from the UK, Canada, and Poland. Black-and-white photos are scattered throughout the text but sixteen pages of color plates provide beautiful examples of Jewish illustrated manuscripts and material culture in fine detail. In addition, the second volume concludes with several appendices that identify the broader sources of knowledge from which these encyclopedic entries derive. Brief overviews of the Hebrew Bible, Rabbinic Literature, and Medieval Compilations offer readers an outline of the history of Jewish texts in the context of Jewish folklore, and a themed appendix entitled, “Anthologies of Jewish Folklore,” provides a comprehensive list of Jewish folklore scholarship from the tenth century to the twenty-first. This appendix is an invaluable resource for students and scholars interested in exploring more deeply topics introduced in the encyclopedia. Lists of sources include categories such as, “Hasidic Folktale Anthologies,” “Anthologies of Tales from Countries of Islam,” “Sephardic Folksong Anthologies,” “Humor Anthologies,” and “Anthologies for Holidays and Festivals.”
Clear, concise language illuminates the fascinating range of material and provides enough detail to inspire more curiosity about the histories of Jewish communities around the world, the lives and works of Jewish folklorists, and the adaptation of Jewish folklore as an expression of both individual and collective heritage. Because content in a book is inherently limited by a book’s physical characteristics, the fact that these volumes also exist online in an electronic version introduces the potential for future expansion. The Encyclopedia is available as an online database through Credo Online Reference Service so that with a university or public library login, anyone can access and read the entire text. This dimension of the text’s production has several long-term benefits: it makes the text available to a much wider audience that may not be able to afford the over $200 purchase price; the online search function is excellent, allowing one to search both volumes with a word or phrase, and find all of its occurrences throughout the entries; and, the possibility for this work to become an ever-evolving compilation, which is of incomparable value. The effort and time that has gone into producing this text, and the rich content it presents, deserves such future potential.
While the authors and entries are largely Israel- and United States-based, this encyclopedia has undoubtedly filled a hole in Jewish studies, folklore studies, and specifically, Jewish folklore studies. It is a necessary resource that provides a foundation upon which these fields may not only stand strong in the present, but flourish in the future.
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[Review length: 799 words • Review posted on December 3, 2014]