ABSTRACT
The brief but active Yiddish cultural scene in Weimar Berlin came to a near-halt in the middle of the 1920s. The Entsiklopedye was originally planned as a ten-volume set on general subject matter with an additional eleventh volume dedicated to Jewish life and culture. The tendency towards Jewish universalism stood in stark contrast with that of German Jews during the period. A Yiddish encyclopedia would be established on the model of other Jewish encyclopedias, such as the twelve-volume English-language Jewish Encyclopedia, the sixteen-volume Russian-language Evreiskaia entsiklopediia , and the four-volume Judisches Lexikon. The Entsiklopedye was originally planned as a ten-volume set on general subject matter with an additional eleventh volume dedicated to Jewish life and culture. However, the Nazi rise to power— and then later World War II and the Holocaust — repeatedly forced the Entsiklopedye's editors to reformulate their project on account of the rapidly changing circumstances in Europe.
