Library Guides: Jewish Studies: Introduction

Introduction

This subject guide highlights some key discipline resources to get you started with study and research.

Refer to the New Students Library Guide for everything you need to know about Library services and resources.
Build your researching, reading and writing skills with the Research Essentials Library Guide.
Streamline your access to online resources with the Library's quick access tools.

Encyclopedias

Oxford Reference
Provides high quality, up-to-date reference content on a variety of topics including Jewish Studies.
Oxford Bibliographies Online
Provides short, focused overviews of a wide range of topics including Jewish Studies, also pointing you to key works and further recommended readings.
Cambridge Histories Online
This historical reference compendium contains up to date and authoritative scholarly content including the Cambridge History of Judaism.

Kabbalah: a very short introduction / Joseph Dan.
"A leading authority on Jewish mysticism offers a compact account of the Kabbalah, shedding light on the many misconceptions that have adhered to the work & discusses the role of the Kabbalah in the development of Jewish thought from medieval times to the present day."
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict : a very short introduction / Martin Bunton
"The conflict between Palestine and Israel is one of the most highly publicized and bitter struggles in history. In this accessible introduction, Martin Bunton clearly explains the history of the problem, reducing it to its very essence - a modern territorial contest between two nations and one geographical territory."

Books

You can access print and eBooks via the Library Catalogue. To find books on a particular subject, try a keyword search:

To improve your searching skills, see the Research Essentials Library Guide. Note that you can search the catalogue in non-Latin scripts (including Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Korean).

For information on access and loans, including material from other libraries, see the borrowing from the library page. The eBook Guide provides information on eBook access.

Primary sources

Primary-source databases:

Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954
Primary source collection exploring the history of Jewish communities in America from their first arrival in New York in 1654 to today. Includes American Jewish Historical Society's most important and valuable archival collections.
Compact Memory
Compact Memory contains a collection of rare Jewish nineteenth century periodicals published in German-speaking countries. The archive includes works spanning a wide spectrum of subjects from the major streams of Judaism.
Visual History Archive Online
Visual History Archive published by USC Shoah Foundation allows users to search through and view more than 52,000 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide. Initially a repository of Holocaust testimony, it has expanded to include testimonies from the Armenian Genocide that coincided with World War I, the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China, and the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
Lexikon des Mittelalters (lexMA)
LexMA’s articles cover all aspects of medieval studies within the period 300 to 1500. Its geographical scope covers the whole of Europe, part of the Middle East, and parts of North Africa to document the roots of Western culture and those of its neighbours in the Byzantine, Arab and Jewish worlds. IEMA is an entirely new supplement to LexMA. The chronological range of IEMA is 300-1500 CE, and it will cover all of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. IEMA will complement and fill in gaps in the coverage of the present Lexikon des Mittelalters (LexMA).

Newspapers:

Historical Jewish Press
"The Historical Jewish Press website includes electronic versions of Jewish newspapers from different historical periods in three languages. All the website's newspapers are black and white, and the website allows the user to search the text of all the published material. Search results are given in the form of articles that mirror the original layout of the newspaper."
American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger
"The American Hebrew was a weekly Jewish newspaper published in New York City. In 1903 it merged with the Jewish Messenger. The paper covered many topics of Jewish interest internationally. Many prominent Jewish writers and communal workers in the United States have been contributors to its pages."
Jewish Advocate (Proquest)
"The Jewish Advocate serves as a primary source of news and information as well as a forum for discussion and debate, providing lines of communication uniting the community and supporting the efforts aimed at reinvigorating and broadening Jewish religious and cultural life. This collection includes The Boston Advocate (1905-1909) and The Jewish Advocate (1909-1990)"
Jewish Exponent (Proquest)
"The Jewish Exponent has carried news of developments in Israel, efforts to rescue Jews the world over from repressive regimes, and the ever-expanding role of Jews in American public life. Along the way, it has garnered honors each year from the American Jewish Press Association for excellence in Jewish journalism for its news, features, reviews and commentary."
American Israelite
"The American Israelite is the longest-running English-language Jewish newspaper still published in the United States. The newspaper's two goals were to spread the principles of Reform Judaism, and to keep American Jews in touch with Jewish affairs and their religious identity. This collection includes The Israelite (1854-1874) and The American Israelite (1874-2000)"

Databases and journals

Use databases to search across many academic resources (including peer-reviewed journals) at the same time.

Refer to the A-Z Ejournals and Databases page for a comprehensive list of available resources.

Core Arts and Humanities databases:

The selection of multidisciplinary databases below will retrieve results from different subject areas.

Discovery (EBSCO)
Use Discovery to look for books, ebooks, journal articles and more. It's a great place to start your search but does not give you everything the Library has.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is one of the most popular ways to find academic sources for study and research. Did you know you can use it to search for journal articles that the University of Melbourne has access to? You can do this through the link above or set up your Google Scholar preferences to include Library content.
JSTOR
JSTOR is one of the largest databases the Library has access to. It is a multidisciplinary database so it looks in thousands of journals in over a hundred subjects - many of them related to arts and humanities. Highly recommended as your first or second place to search.
ProQuest Central
Covering more than 160 subjects areas, ProQuest Central is the largest aggregated database of periodical content. This award-winning online reference resource features a highly-respected, diversified mix of content including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, books, newspapers, reports and videos.
Scopus (Elsevier)
Scopus is another large, multidisciplinary database. It looks through journals, books, and conference papers. It has some advanced tools that can help you discover new research quickly - the 'times cited' and 'related articles' links are great time-savers. While it doesn't always have full-text PDFs it is still an excellent place to look for your research.
Web of Science
Web of Science is a massive, multidisciplinary database which includes a large amount of humanities and social sciences material from as far back as 1900. Like Scopus it has some advanced features that allows you to quickly link to related research.

Jewish Studies-specific databases:

For more focused results try searching in one of these subject-specific databases.

Index to Jewish Periodicals
"This database provides a comprehensive guide to English-language articles, book reviews, and feature stories in more than 160 journals devoted to Jewish affairs. Titles include Contemporary Jewry, Holy Land Studies, Jewish Culture & History, Journal of Palestine Studies, Studies in American Jewish Literature, and many more."

RAMBI: Index of Articles on Jewish Studies
Selective bibliography of articles in the various fields of Jewish studies compiled from thousands of periodicals and from collections of articles - in Hebrew, Yiddish, and European languages - mainly from the holdings of the Jewish National and University Library