Gershon Hundert led an ambitious project, one that by all counts has been a resounding success. As editor-in-chief of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, Hundert helmed a team that set out to rigorously capture an entire ethnicity nearly destroyed by genocide and that threatened to disappear into the annals of history.
Gershon Hundert led an ambitious project, one that by all counts has been a resounding success. As editor-in-chief of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, Hundert helmed a team that set out to rigorously capture an entire ethnicity nearly destroyed by genocide and that threatened to disappear into the annals of history.
Hundert, who is also a professor of Jewish Studies at McGill University, will deliver this year’s Lorry I. Lokey Lecture Tuesday, April 24, in the Smith Memorial Student Union. His talk will center on the seven-year process that produced the innovative encyclopedia.
Eastern European Jews are a culture often viewed through a narrow lens, something Hundert and his team were keenly aware of: “We struggled with how to include the Holocaust,” he said. “How do you prevent it from swallowing the whole project?”
The answer ultimately became clear: “We were interested in the lives and civilization of the Jews and not its destruction,” Hundert said.
So while mentioning the Holocaust was unavoidable, the team chose not to let the violence and tragedy of genocide eclipse the rich cultural heritage and historical legacy of Jews in Eastern Europe.
The encyclopedia is an astonishingly comprehensive work: 450 experts from three continents contributed over 1,800 entries on everything from literature, architecture and folklore to music and theater. The book was published in two volumes by Yale University Press in 2008. Hundert boasts that “every article is written by the leading expert in that field.”
But from its conception, the encyclopedia was intended to be more than a definitive tome left to gather dust on the shelves of university libraries throughout the world. In 2010, the entire encyclopedia was made available online for free and updated with over 11,000 images, film clips and sound recordings.
“We were determined from the very beginning that it would be online, that there would be universal access,” Hundert said. “We wanted to make accurate information available to whoever is interested.”
Hundert has been fascinated by watching how people use the site: “What people are interested in seems to fluctuate,” he said. “At the beginning, the most popular entries were on music; recently, it’s more Yiddish.”
As the first reference work to be available fully online and for free, the encyclopedia is getting used quite often in academia, including at Portland State.
Natan Meir, Lorry I. Lokey assistant professor of Judaic Studies at PSU, said that “the encyclopedia is a landmark work of scholarship in the field of Judaic Studies.” Meir uses it extensively in his classes, both as assigned reading and as a resource for students to do independent research.
Hundert’s upcoming talk is part of the Judaic Studies Department’s annual Lorry I. Lokey lecture in Jewish history. The lecture series is named in honor of the philanthropist whose endowment also funds professor Meir’s chair.
Meir stressed that the lecture is open to the public. “I am hoping this lecture will introduce a greater number of people to the encyclopedia itself,” he said, adding that he also hopes “people will get some insight into how a work like this gets created.”
Meir is excited to bring the McGill University professor to PSU. “Professor Hundert is one of the preeminent scholars in Judaic Studies,” he said. “He knows the field like few other people know it.”
Hundert will also be giving a lecture in Hebrew on his latest research at Congregation Neveh Shalom Monday, April 23, as part of the Machon Ivrit’s Hebrew-language conversation group.
He said that the encyclopedia project is far from complete and that the team is “waiting a few years before we consider what the next step is. There is still a lot we don’t know. I hope people who are interested in the field will begin with the encyclopedia and expand on it.”
