Sefaria

Sefaria
Available in English, Hebrew
Website www.sefaria.org
Alexa rank Positive decrease 113,624
Commercial No
Current status Active

Sefaria is an online open source free content digital library of Jewish texts. It was founded in 2011 by former Google project manager Brett Lockspeiser and journalist-author Joshua Foer.[1] Calling itself "a living library of Jewish texts", Sefaria relies on volunteers to add texts and translations.[2] Texts are provided under a free license both in Hebrew and in translation. The website also provides a tool for creating source sheets.[3]

Sefaria is a non-profit organization.[4]

History

Sefaria was originally founded in 2011, by Joshua Foer, and Brett Lockspeiser, a former product manager at Google. The site's first beta was released in 2012. The company was formally incorporated in 2013, with funding from the Natan Fund, Jonathan and Tamar Koschitzky, and the Jim Joseph Foundation. In 2014, engineers at Sefaria created a data visualization, showing the many connections between the Tanach and Talmud. By 2015, twelve apps used Sefaria's API and database, and reached a deal to use transitions that had previously been published by Urim Publications. Sefaria's website received a major redesign in 2016, alongside the release of new apps for iOS and Android, and a complete English translation of Rashi's commentary on the Torah. By this point, over a dozen people were part of the website's staff. Sefaria reached a major milestone in 2017, with the release of the Willam Davidson Talmud.[5][6]

Content

Sefaria has a vast library of Jewish text, including Tanach, Talmud, and Jewish prayers alongside newer works. Sefaria's content comes from a variety of sources. Books in the public domain are scanned and processed by OCR software, which a team corrects and formats. Other online sources such as On Your Way are also used. Some publishers have also provided works directly to Sefaria.[7]

Translations

Some works, such as Tanach and the Talmud even feature English translations. These are either crowdsourced, provided by publishers, or in the public domain. Some translations are even written by Sefaria.[7]

Features

Many works are linked with their respective commentaries. For example, clicking on a verse in Tanach will open a window on the side, allowing the user to open a commentary on that verse.

Source Sheets

Sefaria's Source Sheet Builder allows users to create a page with source text from Sefaria. Source Sheets can be made public, and available for other users, or can be downloaded as a PDF and printed.

References

  1. ↑ Maier, Lilly (February 8, 2017). "You Can Now Read The Whole Talmud Online - For Free". The Forward. Retrieved 25 July 2017.
  2. ↑ Borschei-Dan, Amanda (November 13, 2014). "Old-school educators go hi-tech to promote Torah accessibility". The Times of Israel. Retrieved 25 July 2017.
  3. ↑ Schifrin, Dan (11 July 2014). "Locally fueled Sefaria project has radical ambitions for traditional Jewish texts". J. The Jewish News of Northern California.
  4. ↑ Chabin, Michele (February 10, 2017). "Nonprofit offers online English-language translation of the Talmud for free". Religion News Service. Retrieved 25 July 2017.
  5. ↑ "About Sefaria". www.sefaria.org. Retrieved 2017-10-04.
  6. ↑ "Sefaria and Urim Publications Strike Unprecedented Agreement". The Sefaria Blog. 2015-02-11. Retrieved 2017-10-04.
  7. 1 2 "Content FAQ". GitHub. Retrieved October 4, 2017.


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