Purpose

The purpose of the Jewish Music WebCenter is to support and encourage scholarship and general enjoyment of Jewish music. This website provides an informational platform for activities by individuals and groups as well as academic and archival resources.

History

The Jewish Music WebCenter  was started by Judith Pinnolis, a librarian at Brandeis University in April, 1996, as an experiment in online bibliography. Less than two years later, In February, 1998, the Jewish Music WebCenter was born as an independent website with its own domain name.  At that time, there were only about 75 websites of Jewish Music and a bibliography of 40 selected print reference sources. Today there are thousands of websites and many more academic sources of Jewish music interest linked through this site.  During the last twenty years,  key institutions have linked to this site as an accurate source for students and scholars in Jewish music. These have included the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, Harvard University, Hebrew University, Columbia University,  the Museum of the Diaspora in Israel (Beth Hatfusoth), Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the University of London, and many others.  Due to the high rate of linkage on the Internet, standard search engines, such as Google and Bing, easily find this site with a simple “Jewish music” search.

Structure

As the Internet has evolved, the Jewish Music WebCenter has evolved with it. This is the 4th new structure to our website. Currently much of the site has moved to a database driven format on Word Press. This has allowed a smoother operation of updates to the website, which previously had been in static webpages and had to be cross referenced manually.  If you have questions or suggestions, please contact the editor at: info@jmwc.org

Annotations

While I strive to find as much information as possible, The JMWC cannot be all inclusive. Listings are generally annotated, described or reviewed. Where quote marks appear in an annotation, the material was taken directly from that book or website, and is intended to indicate a direct attribution. Every attempt is made to be as accurate as possible in description and attribution as of the date it was added to the JMWC. However, websites do change frequently. If you have information regarding a needed update, please contact the editor at: info@jmwc.org