Customer Reviews

Encyclopaedia Judaica: The Most Comprehensive Authoritative Source on the Jewish World

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This cd-rom is twelve years old and not compatable with the newer Windows operating system. The makers of the product said it has been off the market for over two years, and were surprised I could even buy it anywhere. On the positive side, Amazon happily refunded my money even though the software packaging had been opened. Also, if you happened to have an older computer, the content does look really interesting.

'Judaica ' is an immense work of scholarship. Cecil Roth , and then Geoffrey Wigoder harnessed the energy of the best scholars of Jewish studies. They produced book- size entries on major subjects of Jewish life and history. There are important essays on Jewish demography, communal life, on Israel and its history, on the history of the Jewish people, on the Bible and Civilization, on Jewish Literature and in fact on the Jews relation to every aspect of Culture and Life.

This remarkable work is as I understand it now being updated. If this is done in the spirit and with the committment to truth of the original this revision will be an invalvuable resource for all those for whom knowledge of Jewish life and world is important.

We received the CD and tried to open it on Windows Vista - it would not work and even Windows explorer could not read the disk. Showed 0 bytes - Thank you Amazon for allowing us to return opened with a full refund.

I gave the encyclopedia 4 stars because it will only run on XP when you adjust your RAM memory to 512MB. I experienced this issue the very same day I bought it in the early 2000s and I paid about $269.US dollars for the software. The encyclopedia will not run with higher memory which is a pain because you can't open other applications due to a possible system freeze. The program needs the original CD in the drive which is another pain because if you aren't in your home, then you have to carry the CD with you. The encyclopedia has a great search engine, editors introduction explaining the content of the encyclopedia, an interactive guided tour where you click on the screen selections and it teaches you how to use the user interface, a timeline from the beginning of Jewish Culture, History and general history-years 2000BCE-1994CE, a multimedia gallery showing photos, audio and video clips, and the encyclopedia itself which is very vast. I don't think you can find this program anywhere but if you do and for a great price, I would jump all over it! Follow these steps if you want the Encyclopedia Judaica to work on your system Win7 or XP:

(1) I'm running a Windows7 system, and the encyclopedia is running on Windows XP Virtual mode in Windows 7. You can download Windows Virtual XP free from Microsoft and install it to your computer. Once you have Windows Virtual XP installed on your system, then install the encyclopedia on Windows Virtual XP. You have to keep the CD in the drive because the program when running will always access information from the CD. The encyclopedia will not run from the CD drive without installation. I was very surprise and excited that it worked without memory adjustments.

(2) If you run encyclopedia Judaica on a system with Windows XP only, then you have to adjust the RAM memory to 512MB, you can access this under MSCONFIG. Click on the start button on the lower left of your screen, then click on RUN, type MSCONFIG, a window will open showing System Configuration Utility window, click on the tab Boot.INI, then click on the Advance Options button on the lower right side of the window, a window will open, then check the box of MAXMEM=, then type 512MB click OK, then click the Apply button, then click OK and restart your system. This is the only way the Encyclopedia will work on XP. It is a hassle because with 512MB of RAM you can't open too many applications. If you have Windows Virtual XP with your Windows 7, then the program will work because Windows XP virtual uses virtual memory and it will know automatically to allocate only 512MB RAM to the program. I use this encyclopedia all the time for college and personal research/teaching. Remember people, you have to install the encyclopedia on Windows Virtual XP not on Windows 7!

I hope this helps for those that still have the program, please let me know your input and experience.

thanks,

Dan

The CD-ROM version is 15-years old, so some of the stuff may no longer be valid. But it IS an encyclopedia, therefore most of the material will be genuine, informative, and forever up-to-date. I learned more in two hours of looking at this multimedia masterpiece than from all the other sources in my entire life. Multimedia is not a necessity for me, but I can see why it could be a tremendous help to some. The price of the CD-ROM is 1/3 that of the hard-copy 22-volume set. Unless you are a serious scholar, (most of us?), the CD-ROM is more than sufficient. In fact, it may take me the rest of my life to view, listen, and learn what's in the EJ CD-ROM.

For those of you who are not technoweenies... since the SETUP is a 16-bit program and our Windows Vista or Windows 7 machines run either 32- or 64-bit OSs, you will have to do a bit of tweaking. One of the easiest way to install EJ CD-ROM is to create a Windows XP SP2 Virtual PC on your machine. You can get straightforward instructions by simply entering the following phrase in your favorite search engine "I wanna run an old program on mah Windows 7, may I?" If you don't know how to do this, ask one of your grandkids to do it for you.