The publication of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe is a monumental achievement. It is the type of text that can transform a discipline, providing easily accessible and reasonably accurate answers to common reference questions and summarizing the state of the field in an evenhanded and inclusive manner. As one of the nearly 450 contributors to the encyclopedia, I personally feel a great deal of pride in its outcome.Footnote ¹ The two-volume, 2,400-page encyclopedia includes more than 1,800 entries, almost 1,200 illustrations, 57 color plates, and 55 maps. Editor in chief Gershon David Hundert of McGill University has succeeded in producing, as YIVO claims, “the definitive reference work on all aspects of the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe from the beginnings of their settlement in the region to the present.”Footnote ²

Encyclopedias often serve not only to categorize knowledge but also to forge identities. They tend to emerge at a time of taking stock, when it is possible to reevaluate a community in response to social or political upheaval. The goal of the encyclopedia is not only to present accumulated knowledge on a given topic, but also to celebrate the topic, either as a means of paying homage to a proud past or as a way of looking forward to a bright future. Modern Jewish encyclopedias emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as attempts to counteract the perceived exclusiveness of the national encyclopedias that had come to dominate the nineteenth-century world of reference books. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, the standard by which all others were measured, was first published in the late eighteenth century as a Scottish response to Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie. By the late nineteenth century, with its ninth edition, the Britannica was widely recognized as the premier scholarly reference work in the world. Yet many Jewish intellectuals were reluctant to allow the Britannica—and the many converts from Judaism who had written articles on Jewish-related topics—to serve as the sole reference on their own distinct culture. It was within this milieu that Isidore Singer, a member of the French press attached to the French foreign office who had been active in the defense of Alfred Dreyfus, envisioned the creation of a Jewish encyclopedia that would serve as a storehouse for all Jewish knowledge. Lacking scholarly credentials himself, Singer enlisted the assistance of Cyrus Adler, Marcus Jastrow, Louis Ginzberg, and others to help with the task, but Singer retained the position of managing editor, and managed to publish, between 1901 and 1906 in twelve volumes, the Jewish Encyclopedia. “The history of the Jewish people has an absorbing interest for all who are concerned in the development of humanity,” the editors wrote in the preface. Writing in the American Journal of Theology, J. M. P. Smith, J. W. Moncrief, C. W. Votaw, and W. Muss-Arnolt argued that “compared with the history of other nations, Jewish history excels in its capacity to exercise an ennobling influence upon the heart. It has, moreover, a humanitarian influence which appears in its tragic and heroic past.” The reviewers believed that Jewish history “will be of the utmost value, not only to the Jewish people, but to all peoples who have any interest in understanding the system of moral forces that have made them what they are.” The publication of the encyclopedia was envisioned as a bridge that would bring communities together: “If the work gets the recognition that it deserves,” they wrote, “the outcome must be to bring Christians and Jews nearer together, because it will reveal what they have in common, and thus relax the rigidity of prejudice.”Footnote ³

The 1908–13 publication of the Russian-language Evreiskaia entsiklopediia by the Brokhaus and Efron publication venture in St. Petersburg was a key moment in the creation of a distinct Russian Jewish identity, signifying the celebration of Russian Jewry as a group of people united by their shared Jewish and Russian identities. This project came about as part of a larger effort to create a Jewish public culture by disseminating key concepts about the Jewish world at large, and about the Russian Jewish community in particular, to the emerging Jewish secular community of the Russian Empire.Footnote ⁴ The encyclopedia included many articles translated or adapted from the Jewish Encyclopedia, as well as much larger entries on subjects of specific relevance to the Jews of the Russian Empire, written by local intelligentsia such as Shimon Dubnov and Iulii Gessen. By creating a common base of knowledge, the editors of Evreiskaia entsiklopediia hoped to stimulate identity formation and secular learning among Jews and to correct numerous misconceptions about the nature of the Jewish community among Russian-speaking Christians.

In the aftermath of the Great War, Jacob Klatzkin and Ismar Elbogen imagined that they could harness the best that German scholarship had to offer to present a complete reference work on Judaica. Their project began in 1928, but by the time they reached the letter L in 1938, the German political landscape made continued work on the project impossible and the effort was abandoned. A review of the tenth volume in 1938 lamented that “it is sad to contemplate that a work of such magnitude and of such great usefulness should be interrupted because of the cruel persecutions that have befallen the Jewish people in the land of the Third Reich.”Footnote ⁵ The project, though, was revived by a joint Israeli–American venture and continued publication in English under the editorship of Cecil Roth and Geoffrey Wigoder. The resulting Encyclopaedia Judaica, published in 1972, was once again touted as a great achievement capable of bringing about world peace and reconciliation: copies were presented to President Richard M. Nixon and to Pope Paul VI. Not everyone rejoiced, however. Writing in the Jewish Quarterly Review, Solomon Zeitlin opined, “The publication of the Encyclopaedia Judaica is not a major accomplishment in the world of Jewish scholarship. On the contrary, it reveals the paucity and decadence of Jewish learning. Many articles are below the standards of a good encyclopedia, they are sophomoric… . The publication of the Encyclopaedia Judaica was a waste of effort and money.” Zeitlin was right to point to numerous factual errors and misinterpretations that had made their way into the encyclopedia. He was likely also perturbed by the overtly Zionist bias of the text. Yet even as harsh a critic as Zeitlin could not resist commending one aspect of the venture: the last sentence of his twenty-seven page-review read, “Israeli printing is highly commendable.”Footnote ⁶

The fate of the Yiddish-language Di algemeyne entsiklopedye parallels in some ways that of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Di algemeyne entsiklopedye began publication in 1930 with the goal of bringing general knowledge to Yiddish-speaking readers, but as the community to which it was addressed came under increasing threat toward the end of the decade, the editors changed their mode and began publishing instead on specifically Jewish topics. Seven volumes were published between 1939 and 1966, serving after the war as a commemoration of a destroyed way of life instead of the edifying resource book initially envisioned.Footnote ⁷ Other Jewish encyclopedic ventures that began in 1930s Poland were also curtailed or transformed as the war intervened, resulting in multivolume, mismatched sets published in disparate locales. Zalmen Zylbercwaig's Leksikon fun yidishn teater serves as a prime example: the first two volumes, published in New York in 1931 and Warsaw in 1934, respectively, reflect a great deal of optimism in the future of Yiddish culture. By the time the third volume appeared in New York in 1959, all hints of a normal order (along with an alphabetical order) were abandoned. The remaining three volumes were finally published in Mexico in the late 1960s, and included a volume dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust.

Like many of these encyclopedic publications, The YIVO Encyclopedia also appears at a time of great optimism, expressed in YIVO's publicity and Hundert's preface. Drawing contributors from sixteen different countries, the encyclopedia, YIVO claims, “not only provides a forum for [its contributors'] collective knowledge, but also serves as a meeting point for a new generation of scholars from Communist Europe and their colleagues from North America, Israel, and Western Europe.”Footnote ⁸ Certainly it was the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe that served as the catalyst for the encyclopedia. In the twenty years since the Iron Curtain was opened, our understanding of Jewish life in Eastern Europe has been enhanced immeasurably. Travel to and around the region has become incomparably easier, not only for Western researchers who were entirely restricted from visiting many important sites of Jewish interest, but also for researchers from Eastern Europe, whose travel itineraries were monitored and restricted. This travel informs numerous articles on specific places throughout the encyclopedia, particularly smaller towns and cities for which earlier encyclopedias provided only minimal statistical information. The relative ease of travel has also helped a younger generation of scholars acquire language experience through immersion made difficult a generation earlier. Physically getting to many regional archives was almost impossible, let alone accessing relevant files once one arrived. The opening of archival collections has, if not completely revolutionized our understanding of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, at least reformed it. From wax cylinder musical recordings to tax records, newly available archival documents from Eastern Europe have substantially enriched scholarship on Jewish life in that region. Published archival guides, both in print and online, have also made it substantially easier to find relevant information. The efforts of archives outside Eastern Europe, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Study in Washington, D.C., and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, have embarked on major campaigns to obtain copies of important archival documents, increasing access to these materials. While personal worldviews continue to inform scholarship in important ways, the ideological biases that tainted much Cold War scholarship have largely evaporated. Behind the Iron Curtain, scholars were prohibited from addressing many topics of importance to Jewish studies and were required to pursue an often hostile party line when they did address them. Some scholars in the West, as well, hoped to use their work to promote political change in Eastern Europe. New sources of funding have also helped stimulate scholarship on Eastern European Jews as philanthropic organizations have grown and government support has continued.

The YIVO Encyclopedia was funded by numerous family foundations, along with major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The proliferation of Jewish studies programs around the world has also aided scholarship on Eastern European Jewry. As the German Jewish historians who once dominated the academic discipline of Jewish studies have welcomed into their midst specialists on diverse Jewish communities, the pantheon of modern Jewish thinkers has expanded beyond the likes of Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Scholem to include Dubnov, An-sky, Ringelblum, and others. The cultural and social turns in history have also elevated the status of everyday life and popular culture, encouraging scholars to study not just the luminaries who spoke on behalf of the people, but the people themselves. The single most important factor in the transformation of the field since the collapse of communism has indubitably been the increased communication and integration of scholars from Eastern Europe with those from the Americas, Israel, Europe, and elsewhere. It is not just the lessening of travel restrictions that has collapsed the scholarly world, but also modern communications and the Internet that have made international collaboration not only possible, but the norm.

In this age of the Internet, where, as I write these lines, I have one window on my computer open to http://www.jewishencyclopdia.com, containing the complete text of the Jewish Encyclopedia; another window open to http://www.eleven.co.il/, where I am reading the Elektronnaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia (Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia), an online version of the Israeli Kratkaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia (Short Jewish Encyclopedia); another window open to the electronic edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica made available by the Gale Virtual Reference Library through my university's subscription;Footnote ⁹ and yet another window on which I am running the CD-ROM version of the Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, the printed version of the YIVO Encyclopedia seems almost quaint. If the goal of a reference work is simply to check a fact or a date, printed reference books may very well be on their way out. Macmillan's decision to publish the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica in electronic version was preceded by the Encyclopaedia Britannica's decision to publish a digital version in 1994. Yet encyclopedias do not just exist to check a date; rather, the best of them can and should be read, if not cover to cover in a single sitting, at least sporadically and intensively in order to fully appreciate their richness and the underlying themes that permeate each entry. As much as I look forward to the release of the electronic edition of the YIVO Encyclopedia currently under way, I have truly enjoyed and expect to continue to enjoy reading the print edition. Like so many of the other encyclopedias I have mentioned, the new YIVO Encyclopedia thus emerges at a time of transition, not only in terms of changing political and social conditions, but also in terms of the radically different ways in which information is accessed around the globe.

The transition is also, in many ways, generational. The list of contributing scholars who either did not live to see the encyclopedia's completion or passed away soon after is substantial. The field was still mourning the passing of Miron Chernenko, Victor Erlich, Natan Gross, Louis Jacobs, Nathaniel Katzburg, and John Klier at the time of the encyclopedia's publication. Among those we have lost since its publication are Jonathan Frankel, Avraham Greenbaum, Leonard Praeger, Joseph Sherman, and Josephine Woll, all doyens of the field. The generation of scholars who were raised in prewar Eastern Europe, in communities infused with Jews and Judaism, is dwindling. The next generation will have to secure its knowledge of that time and place secondhand.

The YIVO Encyclopedia, in Hundert's words, “seeks to reflect all aspects of Jewish life in its variety and multiplicity: religious and secular; male and female; urban and rural; Hasidic and Misnagdic; Yiddishist and Hebraist; Zionist and assimilationist; Russian and Polish; Romanian and Ukrainian; Lithuanian and Galician; even Karaite and Rabbinite… . The YIVO Encyclopedia is intended to be an ecumenical work: nondenominational, nonideological, and nonconfessional” (ix). The geographic limits include the regions corresponding to today's Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, the Baltic states, Finland, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The use of twenty-first-century borders for the encyclopedia's parameters may seem anachronistic, but Hundert explains that “most readers … would have been confused by the inclusion of only parts of several countries, and of some areas only during specific historical periods” (xii). The chronological limits span from the earliest settlements in the region, often in Roman times, to the end of the twentieth century, with most attention given to modern periods.

Throughout the encyclopedia, the focus is on Jewish life. Nevertheless, those who were born Jewish but either abandoned Judaism or never identified as Jews are included within the parameters. Notably, the Jewish Encyclopedia dealt with a similar issue one hundred years ago, concluding that, “As the present work deals with the Jews as a race, it was found impossible to exclude those who were of that race, whatever their religious affiliations may have been.”Footnote ¹⁰ The YIVO Encyclopedia comes to a similar conclusion but with different justifications. Hundert notes in his preface that even those who chose not to identify as Jewish may still have been identified as Jewish by others, may have affected the Jewish community through their actions, or may have excelled in spite of their Jewishness. Further, he notes, readers expect to find them in such an encyclopedia. One could add that the phenomena of abandoning one's Jewishness and of assimilating are also part of the Eastern European Jewish experience, for better or for worse. Non-Jewish figures who had a major impact on Jewish life are discussed in appropriate places, but individual biographical entries are reserved for Jews. Thus, the blind entry for “Khmel'nyts'ky, Bohdan” refers the reader instead to “Gzeyres Takh Vetat.” Similarly, panhistoric events, such as the world wars, the Nazi occupation, and communism, are discussed primarily in reference to their impact on Jewish life.

The YIVO Encyclopedia is truly unprecedented in that it is the first encyclopedia of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Many of the topics covered, however, have appeared as entries in more general encyclopedias, particularly the Jewish encyclopedias. Some biographical entries in particular may sound familiar from other reference works, as authors seek to list the subjects' accomplishments in the five hundred words allocated for the life. Although most of the biographical entries I read summarized their subjects' lives with color and precision, setting a new standard as the definitive source on the subject, it is the thematic articles that I found most enjoyable. John Klier's entry on the “Pale of Settlement” (1311–14), for instance, corrects the common error of including the Kingdom of Poland within the Pale, an inaccuracy repeated even in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Klier also adds about 100,000 square miles to the size of the Pale, listing it at approximately 472,590 square miles instead of the Encyclopaedia Judaica's 386,100 square miles.Footnote ¹¹ Finally, Klier gives the Russian cherta postoiannogo zhitel'stva evreev (boundary of permanent Jewish residence) as the official Russian name for the region rather than the more common cherta postoiannoi evreiskoi osedlosti (boundary of permanent Jewish settlement). Like Iulii Gessen's splendid entry on “Residence and Movement of Jews According to Russian Law” in the Brokhaus and Efron encyclopedia (which does not have an entry on the Pale itself), Klier's YIVO article begins with background on the historical origins of the Pale, focused on legal definitions and limitations imposed on settlement within the Pale, followed by a section on “modifications of the Pale.” Klier's entry, however, does a much better job of placing the Pale in a comparative context, noting, for instance, that all classes of Jews had greater freedom of movement within the Pale than burghers, and that the region included “areas of dynamic economic growth” (1311), thereby countering the popular conception of the Pale as economically backward. Whereas Gessen viewed the Pale as a debilitating restriction that forced the Jewish population into poverty, Klier argues that “Jewish impoverishment in the Pale is best explained as a product of the uneven and unsteady economic development of the empire as a whole” (1314).

The YIVO entry on “Hasidism” is another example of the high standard of scholarship that informs the thematic articles throughout. The entry begins with a historical overview written by David Assaf, which presents an evenhanded account of the emergence, growth, consolidation, and dissemination of the movement across Eastern Europe. Assaf draws on recent scholarship to correct some long-standing misconceptions associated with the emergence of Hasidism. He notes, for instance, that early hasidic leaders did not seek to overturn traditional institutions, and that when they did gain positions of leadership within the community, they did so by appropriating existing institutions rather than establishing new ones; even the Besht emerged out of preexisting communities of pietists. Assaf continues his discussion with a report on the spread of Hasidism, devoting sections to the various regions in which hasidic circles were active and discussing the distinct themes that emerge within the practice of different hasidic groups. He is particularly successful at linking his discussion of internal Jewish developments to wider political and social changes taking place around the Polish partitions, the creation of Congress Poland, the First World War, communism, and the Holocaust. His attention to individual hasidic courts serves to dispel the notion that Hasidism was a united movement: “One was not just a ‘Hasid,’ with no further affiliation,” he notes, but “one had to be associated with a specific tsadik or Hasidic court” (664). Assaf's attention to Polish Hasidism, in particular, represents a significant addition to the Encyclopaedia Judaica's coverage of the topic, which focuses overwhelmingly on the movement's Podolian genesis. The addition of two maps, one of major hasidic centers, 1740–1815, and the other on major hasidic courts, 1815–1939, aids the reader in appreciating the spread and diversity of the movement. The Hasidism entry continues with a segment on “teachings and literature” in which Joseph Dan complicates our understanding of hasidic theology, arguing that “every attempt by modern scholars to present such a body of ideas … has failed” (670). In the rest of his contribution, Dan problematizes some of the major features that scholars have identified with hasidic thought, arguing that none can be accepted as part of a universal hasidic theology. It is not theology, he argues, that identifies a hasid, but rather “their dress, customs, manner of prayer, loyalty to a rebbe, and many other obvious aspects of daily life and worship” (670–71). In keeping with this observation, the YIVO Encyclopedia's entry on Hasidism continues with sections on “Everyday Life” by Louis Jacobs, and “Music” and “Dance,” both by Yaakov Mazor. The focus on ritual and lifestyle reflects the direction that much scholarship on the hasidic movement has taken in recent years, and conveys the impact that hasidic lifestyles have had on the Eastern European Jewish landscape.

Immanuel Etkes's entry on “Haskalah,” immediately following the “Hasidism” entry, presents the particular dimensions of the Haskalah as it developed in Eastern Europe. In particular, Etkes argues that “from the beginning, a prominent characteristic of the Haskalah in Galicia was an uncompromising struggle against Hasidism” (682), an aspect obviously absent from the Berlin Haskalah. Etkes pays attention to the role of merchants in spreading the Haskalah both from Berlin to Galicia and from Galicia into the Pale of Settlement; he includes a section on “Government-Sponsored Haskalah,” discussing in detail the educational reforms initiated under Nicholas I; and he links Haskalah in Eastern Europe to the emergence of Jewish nationalism. Throughout the article, Etkes provides detailed commentary on the ideas of leading maskilim, but also integrates the impact of the Haskalah into broader social and cultural trends within the Jewish population as a whole.

The YIVO Encyclopedia brims with life, presenting its civilization as much more than dry lists of names, places, and dates. Indeed, one of the YIVO Encyclopedia's goals was to integrate everyday life into the work. Principal articles on everyday life include ChaeRan Freeze on “Family” and “Sexuality,” Paula Hyman on “Gender,” and Harvey Goldberg on “Life Cycles.” Notably, gender is addressed not only directly in its own entry, but in gendered analyses and attention to women that permeate the encyclopedia. Other topics related to everyday life include magisterial essays by Antony Polonsky on “Relations between Jews and Non-Jews” and Samuel Kassow on “Shtetl,” among many others. Younger scholars have also made particular contributions to these newer fields of study: Scott Ury's reflections on “Sabbath Rest” and Alyssa Quint's entries on “Personal Hygiene and Grooming” and “Social Conduct” come to mind. Comparing Olga Goldberg-Mulkiewicz's entry in the YIVO Encyclopedia on “Dress” with that of the Evreiskaia entsikopediia, we can see in YIVO a greater emphasis on styles, and particularly on women's styles. The corresponding entry in the Evreiskaia entsiklopediia includes a one-column discussion of styles written by Rakhil Bernshteyn, followed by Iulii Gessen's four-and-a-half column discussion of Russian legal enactments on Jewish dress. Whereas a century ago, the legal restrictions were a hotly debated topic of enormous relevance to people's everyday lives, they are mostly historical curiosities to modern readers. An entry on “Talk” includes an overview and sections on storytelling and professional talkers by Michael Wex and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a section on “blessings, curses, and other expressions” by James A. Matisoff, and a section on argots by Robert A. Rothstein. (I would note, however, that the encyclopedia lacks an entry on “Reading” despite extensive scholarly and didactic writings on the topic.) Entries on “Geese” by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and “Pigs” by Anna Shternshis are intriguing, but where are the goats? I was also surprised not to find an entry on “Prostitution,” although the topic is mentioned in passing on several occasions. Clearly topics related to everyday life could be never-ending.

Although most biographical entries concern cultural figures who made their mark in high culture, particularly literature or theater, numerous entries also address popular culture. Edward Portnoy's article on entertainment focuses not on theatrical and musical performances, both of which are well covered elsewhere in the encyclopedia, but on psychics, magicians, illusionists, wrestlers, and strongmen. Cultural figures and ideas, including the 220 or so rabbis who merit biographical entries, seem to be represented more heavily than political figures. For instance, one of the best-known figures in the entire encyclopedia is Leon Trotsky (1879–1940). A Google search of “Trotsky” that I conducted resulted in 2,210,000 hits, far more than I found for “Isserles” (41,300) or “Schneerson” (139,000), but significantly less than I found for “Kafka” (9,640,000). The English-language Wikipedia article on Trotsky runs to 150 paragraphs. However, Boris Morozov, the author of the Trotsky entry in the YIVO Encyclopedia, gives Trotsky a mere nine paragraphs to cover the man whom much of the world associates most saliently with the Eastern European Jew. Similarly, Ana Pauker, the former Romanian foreign minister and Romanian Communist Party leader, is assigned three paragraphs, despite her outspokenness on Jewish matters. Pauker's entry is, in fact, shorter than that of the Romanian Jewish writer Felix Aderca. This relative weighting of space may give readers the impression that Eastern European Jews had a greater impact on culture than on politics, or that cultural pursuits tended to occupy them more than political action.

The illustrations and maps that infuse the text are among the highlights of the project. In particular, the six Overview Maps at the end of the encyclopedia provide a wonderful teaching tool, displaying the shifting borders of the region at six moments in time, each drawn to identical scale. Smaller-scale maps, such as the two-page map of Jewish institutions in Warsaw on the eve of the Second World War (1998–99) provide powerful visual evidence of the diversity of Jewish life in a single locale. This diversity is also reflected in the photographs that range from architectural monuments to street scenes of Jewish life. We see not only the familiar pictures of writers posing in their studies, but also photographs of soldiers in foxholes, seamstresses at work, students in their schools and Talmud Torahs, children at summer camp, workers at demonstrations, and celebrations in synagogues.

The preface and guide by Hundert and project director Jeffrey P. Edelstein address many of the problems encountered in an encyclopedia of this nature and explain many of the parameters used in its composition. I still had some problems following the standards that the YIVO Encyclopedia set. For instance, regarding geographic names, the practice is stated as using “the current, official form” as the headword (xviii), even in cases in which the “modern form used for the headword is not the form most frequently used.” Thus, the city known as Lemberg and Lwów is listed by its current Ukrainian name, L'viv. Yet for some reason, the Ukrainian capital of K'yiv is listed by its more familiar Kiev, the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa retains its Russian double s (Odessa), and the Moldovan capital of Chişinău is listed as Kishinev. The index entry for “Akkerman” refers the reader to “Cetatea Albă,” the Romanian name by which the city currently known as “Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi” was once called. The city's current name is not even listed in the index. Instead, an index entry for the current Russian name of the city, “Belgorod-Dnestrovski,” refers the reader to “Cetatea Albă.” Moldova is listed under the archaic “Bessarabia,” with only a blind entry under “Moldova, Republic of” directing the reader to “See Bessarabia; Kishinev” (1192). An entire country is thereby relegated to a single blind entry. We can certainly forgive the editors for neglecting the breakaway republic of Transnistria, mentioned only to distinguish the region from its World War II–era namesake, and somewhat awkwardly incorporated into that entry (1899).

Transliteration of names is also always a problem in dealing with Eastern European Jewish names. Sholem Aleichem's official family name, for instance, can be spelled Rabinovitz (the choice made by the YIVO Encyclopedia), Rabinowitz (the choice made by Sholem Aleichem himself), Rabinovich, Rabinovitsh, or Rabinovitch. His given name, as well, can be rendered as Solomon, Sholem, or Shalom. Thus, the encyclopedia renders his official name as Shalom Rabinovitz, although the author used Solomon Rabinowitz. The editors chose to allow a great deal of latitude in the transliteration of personal names. The index includes listings for Rabinovich, Rabinovici, Rabinovitch, Rabinovits, Rabinovitsh, Rabinovitz, Rabinowicz, and Rabinowitz. The rendering of first names can also be a difficult choice. Isaac Leyb Peretz, for instance, is rendered as Yitskhok Leybush Peretz. One is reminded of the debates that Shimon Dubnov (or Simon Dubnow, as rendered by YIVO) recalled taking place over the transliteration of names for the Evreiskaia entsiklopediia. The biblical scholars and Hellenists argued that biblical names should be rendered according to the Russian Synodal Bible used by the Russian Orthodox Church. This transliteration, they argued, would render the names familiar to Russian society. Dubnov, on the other hand, argued for a transliteration based on the Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew. A century later, we may not have reached a universal solution to the problem of transliteration, but the YIVO Encyclopedia is well situated to become the authoritative standard for Eastern European Jewish names.

As a comprehensive digest of past and current fields of inquiry within Eastern European Jewish studies, the YIVO Encyclopedia points to the directions in which future scholarship could go, highlights areas in which questions remain to be answered, and hints at questions that have yet to even be asked. Like numerous other Jewish encyclopedias that have been published over the past century, it emerges at a time of optimism in the field, excitement over the possibilities of inquiry that greet young scholars, and confidence in the future. Let us hope that tomorrow's scholars will continue to update, revise, and question the YIVO Encyclopedia as it now embarks on its transition from the printed page to the digital image.