The Bar Ilan Responsa Project (the ''Global Jewish Database'') is a collection of Jewish texts in Hebrew, sold on CD and more recently on USB flash-drive by

Bar-Ilan University Bar-Ilan University (BIU, he, אוניברסיטת בר-אילן, ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academi ...

(in

Ramat Gan Ramat Gan ( he, רָמַת גַּן or , ) is a city in the Tel Aviv District of Israel, located east of the municipality of Tel Aviv and part of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. It is home to one of the world's major diamond exchanges, and man ...

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

Background

The database consists of one of the world's largest electronic collections of Jewish texts in Hebrew. It includes numerous works from the Responsa Literature (rabbinic case-law rulings). The database also includes the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...

and the

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...

(with commentaries); articles about Jewish law and customs;

Maimonides Musa ibn Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (); la, Moses Maimonides and also referred to by the acronym Rambam ( he, רמב״ם), was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Tora ...

Mishneh Torah The ''Mishneh Torah'' ( he, מִשְׁנֵה תּוֹרָה, , repetition of the Torah), also known as ''Sefer Yad ha-Hazaka'' ( he, ספר יד החזקה, , book of the strong hand, label=none), is a code of Rabbinic Jewish religious law ('' ...

and the

Shulchan Aruch The ''Shulchan Aruch'' ( he, שֻׁלְחָן עָרוּך , literally: "Set Table"), sometimes dubbed in English as the Code of Jewish Law, is the most widely consulted of the various legal codes in Judaism. It was authored in Safed (today in I ...

with main commentaries; Zohar, Midrashim, and the Talmudic Encyclopedia. Today the Responsa Project CD-ROM contains more than 90,000 Responsa and more than 420,000 hypertext links between the databases totalling 200 million words. The project was founded by Aviezri Fraenkel who served as its initial director (1963–1974), and subsequent director Yaacov Choueka (1975–1986), as cited by the Israel Prize committee. Currently the project is headed by

Shmaryahu Hoz Shmaryahu Hoz (Hebrew: שמריהו הוז) (born 1945) is a Professor Emeritus specializing in physical organic chemistry and computational nanotechnology. Biography Shmaryahu Hoz was born in Jerusalem in 1945. He received a B.Sc. in Chemis ...

Features

The Features of Bar Ilan Responsa (Version 17 plus) include: Search for a word phrase or expression in relevant texts, search for a wide collection of variant forms specify combined search components etc. Using the hypertext links to locate and display related sources spanning thousands of years. Save search results and other texts in order to view them or print them later with a word processor or use them in other searches. Display biographies of hundreds of responsa authors and other Talmudic and post-Talmudic scholars from medieval times to the present. Calculate the numerical value (gematria) of any expression and find biblical verses or expressions with any specified gematria. Compare parallel Talmudic and other texts. Look up abbreviations in an online dictionary. Display Torah texts that are mentioned by other Talmudic texts with the click of a mouse (hypertext). Search for vocalized text (Nikud) in Tanach. Personal notes and links on the text. Display texts by manually typing in the reference of the desired text. Display text of the Torah and commentaries according to the weekly Torah portion. Display interface in the following languages: in Hebrew (where Windows has Hebrew support), English and French. All texts are in Hebrew.

Awards

* In 2007, the project was awarded the Israel Prize for Rabbinical literature.

History of the database

* 1992 Version 1 released. * 1995 Version 4 released. * 1998 Version 6 released. * 2003 Version 10 released. * 2004 Version 12 released. * 2007 Version 14 released. * 2008 Version 16 released. * 2009 Version 17 released.

References

External links