Jewish Studies

Getting Started with Your Research

Welcome to the Subject Guide for Jewish Studies at Carleton University Library. Use dictionaries and encyclopedias to get an overview and background information. Also listed below are specialized reference resources useful when first exploring a topic. Look in the section Finding Books and eBooks to find Sacred Texts.

Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
Dictionary of Targumim, Talmud and Midrashic Literature
Blackwell companion to Jewish culture : from the eighteenth century to the present
Dictionary of Jewish usage : a guide to the use of Jewish terms
Encyclopaedia Judaica
Encyclopaedia of Judaism
Encyclopedia of the Holocaust
Encyclopedia talmudica
Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea scrolls
Harduf's transliterated English-Hebrew dictionary
Historical dictionary of Judaism
Historical dictionary of the holocaust
New Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel
Reader's guide to Judaism
Theological dictionary of rabbinic Judaism

Historical Studies
The Cambridge guide to Jewish history, religion, and culture
Cambridge history of Judaism

Bibliographies
Antisemitism : an annotated bibliography
Bibliography on Holocaust Liberature 1986 edition and 1993 edition
A critical bibliography of writings on Judaism
The Dead Sea scrolls : major publications and tools for study
Index of articles relative to Jewish history and literature published in periodicals, from 1665 to 1900

Biography
The dictionary of Jewish biography
Encyclopedia of women and religion in North America
Historical dictionary of prophets in Islam and Judaism
Jewish women in America : an historical encyclopedia
Jewish writers of Latin America : a dictionary
Jewish writers of North America : a guide to information sources
Jewish Women: a comprehensive historical encyclopedia
Who's who in Jewish history : after the period of the Old Testament

Music
The resource book of Jewish music
Bibliography of Jewish music

Atlases
The Routledge atlas of Jewish history
The Routledge atlas of the Holocaust
The historical atlas of Judaism

Women and Judaism
The Jewish woman : an annotated selected bibliography, 1986-1993 : with 1994-1995 recent titles list
Women and Judaism : a select annotated bibliography
The Jewish woman, 1900-1985 : a bibliography

Finding Books and eBooks

Use Keyword or Subject searching to find books by a topic.   To search multiple words not as a phrase do a Keyword search and use Boolean Operations -
         AND to find all of the words in any order
         OR to find any of the words
         AND NOT to exclude one or more words

For example
religion and culture and canad*

The * symbol will find any ending up to 5 characters. Canad* will retreive Canada, Canadian, Canadians, etc

A full list of search tips is available at the Keyword Searching page.

Judaic Texts
Below is an guide to the core texts of Jewish religious writing. Search tips for the Library catalogue are provided as well as examples of titles available in the collection.

A good starting point:
Back to the sources : reading the classic Jewish texts

Online texts:
Internet Sacred Text Archive: Judaism A free archive of online texts

Sefaria: a Living Library of Jewish Texts - A free living library of Jewish texts, in Hebrew and in translation

Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)
   Search by title in the Library Catalogue under Bible. O.T. Hebrew
      Tanach : the Torah/Prophets/Writings: the twenty-four books of the Bible, newly translated and annotated
      Tanackh Mikra'ot Gedolot
      The Jewish Study Bible

     Online texts:
      JPS Bible
      A Hebrew - English Bible

Torah - Pentateuch - Five Books of Moses
    Search by title in the Library Catalogue under Bible. O.T. Pentateuch. English
     The Torah : with an interpolated English translation and commentary based on the works of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson
     The Torah; a modern commentary

Online texts:
The Pentateuch

Talmud - Rabbinic Literature, Oral Law

   Search by subject in the Library Catalogue under Talmud; Mishnah
     The Babylonian Talmud
      Mishnayot
     Talmudic encyclopedia 2nd. edition
     The Talmud : law, theology, narrative : a sourcebook

Online texts:
Bar Ilan's Judaic library

Commentaries, Interpretations, etc
      Use the Library Catalogue's Subject search
     Rabbinical Literature -- History And Criticism
     Talmud -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Or do a keyword search
Jewish law and history

E-book titles avaiabable at Carleton are in the Library Catalogue and will be retrieved by a Author, Title, Subject and Keyword search. Or you may browe our e-book collections.

Relevant eBook Collections:
Brill online e-books
Canadian Publishers Collection
Columbia International Affairs Online
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Making of America
MyiLibrary includes ebooks from Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Taylor & Francis
NetLibrary
Oxford Scholarship online: Religion
Patrologia Latina
Springer ebooks (via SpringerLink)

See all ebook collections.

Finding Journal Articles

Key Databases

ATLA Religion Database with ATLA Serials
Index to Jewish Periodicals
Old Testament Abstracts
Index of Articles on Jewish Studies also available online at RAMBI – The Index of Articles on Jewish Studies

Additional Databases

Année Philologique
America History and Life
Historical Abstracts
International Medieval Bibliography
JSTOR
ARTstor Includes approximately 500,000 images covering art, architecture and archeology
Biblical Archaeology Society Online

The list below is a sampling of titles held by the Library. If the journal you are looking for is not listed below, do a title search in the Library Catalogue. If we do not subscribe to it, order the article using Interlibrary Loans.

British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
International Journal of Middle East Studies
The Jewish quarterly review
Jewish social studies
Journal of modern Jewish studies
MERIP-Middle East Report
Middle East Journal
Middle East Policy
Middle East Report
Middle Eastern Studies
Modern judaism
The review of rabbinic Judaism