The Largest Torah Literature Database
The Bar Ilan Responsa Project is the world's largest electronic collection of Torah literature of its kind. The project which has become the most valid and professional tool of Torah Literature, began more than 40 years ago. About the project
Jewish Sources Unveiled at Your Fingertips
The Online Responsa Project encompasses the best of the Jewish sources representing a period of over three thousand years of heritage and tradition. All texts are fully and professionally typed in, proofread and hyper-linked.
The Sources in the Database
The database includes the Bible and its principal commentaries, the Talmud Bavli and Talmud Yerushalmi with commentaries, Midrash, Zohar, Halachic Law (Rambam, Shulchan Aruch with commentaries), a large Responsa collection of questions and answers ('Shut' in Hebrew), the Talmudic Encyclopedia etc. For more information
Brief History:
The Responsa Project began in 1963 at the Weizmann Institute. Over the years it migrated to Bar Ilan University. An early version of the system was already running in 1967.
In the first stages of the project, we decided to focus on the Responsa literature. Jews have traditionally asked their local rabbis for advice on almost every subject. Many of the resulting questions and answers were collected in books. These responsa accordingly contain numerous halachic, historical, sociological and economic data which reflect approximately one thousand years of the Jewish life. Due to the quantity of this material, a special committee was established to set priorities about which texts to include in the database, in light of their relevance, scope and accessibility.
Data entry has been going on for more than thirty years. Initially the system ran in batch mode on an IBM mainframe. Later, from 1979, it also became usable in a time-sharing mode from terminals on the Bar-Ilan campus, as well as from a growing number of terminals off-campus, even from outside Israel. At that time this was no small technological feat.
In 1990, following the development of the CD-ROM, the immense database was compressed into a single compact disk, and presently the system can be installed on almost any personal computer. Version 1.0 of the new system was completed in late 1992, while the online version was released in 2007.
Israel Prize:
In 2007, the Responsa Project was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for Torah Literature.
Responsa Project today:
The Online Responsa Project encompasses the best of the Jewish sources representing a period of over three thousand years of heritage and tradition. All texts are fully and professionally typed in, proofread and hyper-linked.
The database includes the Bible and its principal commentaries, the Talmud Bavli and Talmud Yerushalmi with commentaries, Midrash, Zohar, Halachic Law (Rambam, Shulchan Aruch with commentaries), a large Responsa collection of questions and answers ('Shut' in Hebrew), the Talmudic Encyclopedia etc.
The overall volume of the online project, which is frequently updated, is now reaching to 200 million words. The ‘Shut’ includes 100,000 Halachic laws over a period of thousand years, from all over the world. Extensive biographical data on the authors of Responsa texts have been added as well.
About the directors:
The Responsa Project was conceived by Professor Aviezri Fraenkel, who founded it in 1963, when he formulated its aims and methodology, following a conversation with Mr. Irving Kuttof of Minneapolis, MN. He directed the Project until 1974. Realization of the Project was the result of the joint research efforts of Professor Fraenkel and Professor Yaacov Choueka, who joined in 1966, and served as the Project's director from 1974 to 1986. Professor Nachum Dershowitz directed the project during 1974-1975, when Choueka was on sabbatical.
The directors worked together with a large staff of dedicated Torah scholars, researchers and assistants who specialized in computer science, Judaic studies, and Hebrew computational linguistics.
In the 1970's, Professor Aaron Schreiber was the main force behind getting a large research grant from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, for which Schreiber served as Principal Investigator. This led to the inclusion of many responsa and support for the Project's R & D activities.
Professor Uri Schild was the director of the project from 1990 to 1997. During his 1995-1996 sabbatical, the project was headed by Professor Amihood Amir. Professor Shmuel Tomi Klein was the director in 1997/1998.
For the past few years, the Project has been headed by Rabbi Yaacov Weinberger, together with a small team of scholars and software engineers. In 1991, an Academic Advisory Committee was appointed, whose responsibilities were to recommend and oversee all the policies of the Project, both in the contents of the Project and in decisions regarding which books and publications will be used. In 1997, Professor Yaakov Spiegel, from the Talmud department in Bar Ilan University, was appointed to head this committee. Other advisory members are Professor Aviezri Fraenkel and Professor Leib Moskovitz.
New sources added to the collection
