Wikipedia:Jewish Encyclopedia topics

Welcome to the Jewish Encyclopedia Topics Project These pages contain a directory of topics covered in the public domain Jewish Encyclopedia. Although the JE was published in 1901-1906 and thus does not cover major 20th century events such as the Holocaust, and the foundation of the State of Israel, it has few equals in providing a comprehensive English-language synthesis of pre-20th Century scholarship and opinions on Jewish history, religion, culture, and biography. Be aware, though, that more modern scholarship, and a more modern viewpoint-- in these topics is not covered; the best general source for this is the Encyclopedia Judaica -- in the second edition of 2006-7. It is not free, but all academic libraries have it, and most medium sized public libraries also. The "redlinked"  items on the lists do not have direct equivalents in Wikipedia at present. You may do the following things to make the redlinks go blue:
 * Create a new article for the topic; or
 * Redirect the redlink if there is a corresponding article on Wikipedia which bears an alternative name; and
 * Merge any relevant material from the JE into Wikipedia.
 * There are several articles that are present in the Jewish Encyclopedia which already have topics in Wikipedia, but Wikipedia does not have some or any of the content which is present in the Jewish Encyclopedia. In many cases this is obvious when the article is about a Jewish topic (e.g., an aspect of the Torah) and contains much information easily collected from popular knowledge, but little or no information from academic studies. This is particularly obvious when an article contains no historical-critical information. If you spot an article that has such an appearance, it may be worth checking the corresponding article(s) on the Jewish Encyclopedia.

Once done, please do not delete the topic from the list (now blue-linked), but preserve it so we can continue to compare JE articles to their equivalents in Wikipedia (cf the 1911 verification project).

Method
As part of your efforts to start a new article or augment existing articles on Wikipedia, you are welcome to copy and paste the text from the JE. Click on the external link next to each entry on the list to see a digital transcription of the original JE article. The transcriptions on the JE website have not been edited, so please check the text against the accompanying facsimile of the page from the hard-copy volume.

DO NOT indiscriminately dump text from the JE into Wikipedia! At a minimum, please: You are also encouraged to research and update the articles with new information.
 * format the text according to the Wikipedia Manual of Style;
 * correct any spelling errors;
 * rephrase any awkward-sounding prose to improve clarity and flow;
 * remove 19th century references unless they really move the text along.

When you have finished editing your article, add the template. This practice not only creates a proper reference of the source of the text, but will also help locate articles which demand updates since some of the information from the JE may be obsolete.

For a good example of a Wikipedia article adapted from the JE, see Yiram of Magdiel.

All "live" (blue-linked) topics should be tagged in bold before the JE link with any of the following tags:
 * DAB - our link goes to a dab page, with no entry for the subject of the JE article. (But if there is a relevant article, use a piped link to link directly to that article instead).
 * + - Wikipedia has some general coverage of the topic, but it doesn't reference the JE, or use any of its material. The article may not even take into account a Jewish angle. But the link at least goes somewhere appropriate.
 * JE - the Wikipedia article contains a JewishEncyclopedia link back to relevant article in the JE, and incorporates (at least some) of its content.
 * EL:JE - the article does not contain JE content directly, but references the JE article as an external link.
 * FR:JE - the article does not contain JE content directly, but references the JE article as "further reading".
 * REF:JE - the article references the JE for at least some points it discusses; but does not contain a JewishEncyclopedia template.
 * S 2009-10-18 - a version of the article as of this date can be "signed off" as containing everything that it would be useful to extract from the JE; and also is up-to-date with more recent scholarship/outlooks (and Wikipedia best practice such as NPOV). Typically such articles will in fact be marked JE S, as they will also include a JE template.
 * UNR - Wikipedia has an article (the link is blue), but the subject is unrelated.
 * >> - The JE topic title leads to a general article; but Wikipedia also has (or should have) an article more specifically related to the JE subject-matter
 * (eg: France >> History of the Jews in France).

Transliteration of Hebrew
In the following lists, some changes have been made to the spelling of the article titles. In transliterating the Hebrew consonants chet ח, tet ט, tsadi צ, kuf ק, the JE uses dotted versions of the letters h, t, z, and k. Because many Wikipedians work from machines that cannot display these diacritics, these characters have been converted to ch, t, tz, and q (or k) for the purpose of listing the titles.

Related projects

 * Wikisource:WikiProject Bible dictionaries#Jewish Encyclopedia
 * WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles
 * WikiProject Judaism
 * WikiProject Judaism/Encyclopedic articles
 * WikiProject Jewish history
 * WikiProject Israel
 * WikiProject Bible
 * Portal:Israel
 * Portal:Judaism

Alphabetical Listing of Topics

 * See also: Recent changes to JE topic pages