Although it was originally planned as an abridged translation of the English-language Encyclopaedia Judaica, it became clear as the work progressed that readers raised in the Soviet Union would not be familiar with the concepts lying at the foundation of the cultural and historical system known as Jewish civilization. Therefore, these concepts were elaborated on in greater detail in the SJE, and terms were introduced which lacked equivalents in modern Russian. Most personal and geographic names (in Israel) from the Bible are given in the accepted Hebrew form. The conceptual foundation of the SJE is characterized by a thematic bipolarity: Eretz Israel, and in particular the State of Israel on the one hand, and Russian (i.e., Soviet) Jewry on the other, which nevertheless does not exclude the broad scope of different aspects of the lives and history of Jews in all the other countries of the diaspora.[1]
In practical terms, the SJE was no longer "shorter," and aside from the 11 volumes a "Jewish calendar juxtaposed with a Gregorian calendar (1948-2048)" was published as a pamphlet along with three supplements. Volume 10 also contains a "thematic bibliographic index" with 2,114 items. There are more than 5,300 vocabulary entries, and the total number of words exceeds six million. Volume 11, the final one, included an alphabetized index of subjects, including geographic and personal names and events with references to the volume and column where they are located. A system of citations indicating links between concepts serves as the only cross-reference in the entire corpus of the encyclopedia.[citation needed]
In 1996, the Society for Research on Jewish Communities undertook a reprinting of the first seven volumes of the SJE, which were printed by the printing and publishing house Krasnyj Proletarij in Moscow.[2]
In 2005, the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia (EJE), Russian: Электронная еврейская энциклопедия, romanized: Elektronnaja Evrejskaja Entsiklopedia) was made available on the internet,[3] presenting an expanded and more precise version of the SJE. Work on the EJE continues today.
^(in Russian)Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia based on The Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia (Краткая еврейская энциклопедия) published in Jerusalem in 1976-2005. The Society for Research on Jewish Communities in cooperation with The Hebrew University, Jerusalem