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This page includes Press Reviews of: Davka's - All About Judaism
All About Judaism, a CD-ROM in English by the Davka Corporation
Rating:
*****
A would-be proselyte challenged the first-century CE sage Hillel to teach him the whole Torah while standing on one leg after the rigid Shamai angrily sent him away. "What is hateful to you, don't do to your fellow man; this is the whole Torah. All the rest is explanation. Now go and learn!" Hillel declared.
While English readers will certainly not be able to study all the thousands of articles, view hundreds of pictures and hear dozens of audio clips about Judaism in this program while standing on one leg, they will be able to hold the disk itself on just one finger.
The database is comprised of three printed works published over a decade ago by GG Jerusalem Publishing House: the Encyclopedia of Judaism (1989), the Jewish Primer (1990) and the Dictionary of Jewish Biography (1991, with Simon and Schuster).
The first contains information, often extensive, on people and subjects from Aaron the High Priest to Leopold Zunz, a founder of the "Science of Judaism" (in which Jewish literature, liturgy and religion are studied from a scientific point of view). You can search for material according to a word or name, or just click "List" to see them displayed in alphabetical order.
Some of the items have icons for pictures or audio lit up; you click and look or listen while going through the text. You can, for example, see photos of the Ba'al Shem Tov's study and prayer room, alms boxes, circumcision tools, a plant at St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai alleged to be Moses' burning bush, and a depiction of a ritual slaughterer with an ox from 1435 in Italy. Under the subject "family purity," there is even a picture of a 15th-century Hebrew manuscript from Germany showing a man waiting in his bed for his wife to return from the ritual bath.
The compiler pulled no punches, as abortion, adultery, birth control and artificial insemination are listed among the topics. In the audio collection, among the snatches of lovely songs you can hear are Adon Olam, the blessing on the Shabbat candles and Grace after Meals.
The book lists humanistic Judaism and Reform and Conservative Judaism as well as Orthodox Jewish concepts and figures. One thing that's missing is hypertext links of words and concepts in one listing that transports you to other articles when you click them.
The database on Jewish biography has nearly 1,000 articles on Jews who have left an indelible mark on mankind. There are no living people, only Jews who were deceased at the time of publication. Thus, there is no mention, for example, of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who passed away in 1994, but plenty of space is given to Jewish actors and other personalities who didn't make much of a fuss about being Jewish, such as Jack Benny, William Paley, Jerome Kern, the Marx Brothers, Samuel Newhouse, Edward G. Robinson and Sophie Tucker. The listing is oriented more to American and European readers, and there are few Israelis mentioned (David Ben-Gurion, Yigael Yadin and Menahem Ussishkin are among them). Famous deceased Jewish women are also very underrepresented. A few names, such as that of Joseph Pulitzer, are listed twice. Yet the biographical information in the database is very generous and useful.
The final work, Jewish Primer, was written by Rabbi Dr. Shmuel Himmelstein. It includes helpful material on the Jewish calendar, the Sabbath, all the major Jewish festivals and fasts, the life cycle, clothing, medical issues, dietary laws, business and social legislation, books and modern-day Israel.
Among the 21 chapters is a question-and-answer session in which Himmelstein deals with a variety of tricky issues such as evolution, free will, miracles and ecology. This database lacks audio and visual images, and is comprised only of text.
The disk is a very welcome addition to Jewish software. Excluding the interactive Encyclopedia Judaica, which costs many times more than All About Judaism, I know of no other CD-ROM that can provide such a vast spectrum of information for Jews and non-Jews. It was created for all who seek greater knowledge about Judaism, culture, religion, history and historical and biblical figures, and would be a useful addition to the electronic libraries of Jewish homes and schools around the world.