New Jewish Time is a pioneering work of encyclopedic nature, examining the process of Jewish secularization throughout the last 200 years and its impact upon Jewish life and history. Funded primarily by the Posen Foundation, it was published in Hebrew in 2007, and consists of five volumes.
The four volumes of New Jewish Time survey the processes of modernization and secularization that began in Jewish culture in the past two hundred and fifty years, and also include a fresh view, based on new research, of the history and culture of the Jewish people. The fifth volume contains a detailed name and content Index, as well as a few details about the editors and authors who participated in the creation of this comprehensive work, and details on the artists and photographers and holders of the rights to the hundreds of illustrations, some of them rare, that appear in the encyclopedia.
New Jewish Time was compiled from a critical academic perspective, and with a pluralistic approach, that assumes that there is not a single secular Jewish identity, but a diverse range of identity components in open combinations that are based on personal freedom, with the tension between them constituting an inexhaustible source of ongoing creativity.
The section editors and entry authors are among the leading scholars and thinkers in their fields in Israel and the world. In addition to the editors, four of whom are Israel Prize laureates, close to 250 authors, both secular and religious, men and women, with different worldviews and background, took part in writing the entries.
The encyclopedia’s authors constitute a fascinating mosaic of intellectual and scholarly approaches to the fundamental issues that continue to determine the development of Jewish life in the modern era. New Jewish Time was assembled under the stewardship of Yair Tzaban, the initiator and director of the Encyclopedia; Dr. Yirmiyahu Yovel, the Editor-in-Chief; and Editor David Shaham.