A stand-alone article on Monmouth County's Jewish community, written by a local historian, has been included in the new edition of Encyclopaedia Judaica.

The two-page entry about the county's Jewish community appears in the reference work's newly published 22-volume second edition, which was published in the United States this year.

The article was written by Jean Klerman of Fair Haven. Klerman, a former librarian, is copresident of the board of trustees of the Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County, which will be housed on the second floor of the 19th-century Levi Solomon Barn on Wemrock Road and Route 537 in Freehold.

The creation of the museum, which expects to open its doors in 2008, is among the information included in the Encyclopaedia Judaica article.

Klerman established contact with Encyclopaedia Judaica during the late 1970s, while conducting research for a history of Monmouth County Jewry that she cowrote in 1981.

Encyclopaedia Judaica was first published in 1972. While doing research and making plans for a second, expanded edition, the reference staff contacted Klerman in early 2006 and asked for a submission on Monmouth.

The encyclopedia's editors factored in that the county's approximately 72,000 Jewish residents now constitute about 11.5 percent of the total county population, Lerman said.

"This edition of Judaism's most authoritative and comprehensive reference source decided to greatly expand its coverage of American-Jewish life and history since its first publication in 1972," said Klerman, a charter member of the Central Jersey chapter of the Association of Jewish Libraries. "By granting Monmouth County an extensive article of its own, it gives recognition to the considerable growth and development of the county's Jewish community."

Since the publication of the American edition, Encyclopaedia Judaica has made its way to library shelves throughout Monmouth County. Three of the 11 Monmouth County Library branches in Manalapan, Shrewsbury, and Ocean Township now stock the volumes, as does the Bankier Library at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft and the main branch of the Middletown Township Library.

The reference work is also available at Temple Beth Miriam in Elberon, Temple Beth Torah in Ocean, and Temple Shaari Emeth in Manalapan. Congregation B'nai Israel in Rumson, of which Klerman is a member, is planning to order the books within the next few months. Temple Beth El in Oakhurst is considering an attempt to raise money for the purchase, according to members of the office staff.

Several other synagogues in the county may also purchase the encyclopedia before the end of the year.

Klerman's article for the encyclopedia traces the long and varied history of Monmouth County's Jewish residents from their early 18th-century beginnings, primarily as peddlers, to their present "suburbanite affluence," Klerman said.

"It describes an incredibly rich and unique heritage that highlights Jewish colonial peddlers and tavern-keepers, a fabulously wealthy 19th- and 20th-century German-Jewish summer seaside resort area, and subsequent waves of Yiddish-speaking East Europeans who settled on farms as well as in towns," she said. "The latter include many stories of rags-to-riches merchant families."

The article also includes information on Jersey Homesteads, a Depression-era experimental farming and factory cooperative in western Monmouth County, and on a post-World War II suburban development that brought with it industrial parks and residential subdivisions.

"Alongside each stage of growth, the article contains information on the flourishing Jewish religious, charitable, and social organizational life, from burial societies to synagogues and schools of all denominations, from self-help loan associations to farming cooperatives, from YMHAs to community centers and Jewish day schools, and a county-wide Jewish federation," the Jewish Federation of Greater Monmouth County, she said.

Among other historical facts, the essay also contains information about the 1979 founding of the Center for Holocaust Studies at Brookdale Community College. The center was the first of its kind in New Jersey and continues to expand its services and programs, Klerman said.