SAUL LIEBERMAN INSTITUTE OF TALMUDIC RESEARCH ANNOUNCES UPDATE OF TALMUD TEXT DATABANK, EASING TASK AHEAD FOR JUDAIC SCHOLARS

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The Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research at The Jewish Theological Seminary is proud to announce that the latest update of the Sol and Evelyn Henkind Talmud Text Databank, the product of nearly two decades of research, has been completed. With this update, the institute nears the culmination of the first phase of its extensive project to computerize the texts of manuscripts and early printed editions of the Babylonian Talmud, the central text of Jewish law and lore, offering scholars in the field a critical new analytical tool.

While the Babylonian Talmud has been copied and printed numerous times over the generations and is represented in hundreds of textual witnesses, the institute has sought to bring together, in one databank, 279 textual witnesses of tractates from the Babylonian Talmud, among them full manuscripts of Oriental, Ashkenazic, Sephardic and Yemenite origin; first printed editions from the Soncino, Pesaro and Venice editions; Cairo Geniza fragments and the standard Vilna edition. These texts are used to study the development of the talmudic text, Jewish law and rabbinic culture. The databank will enable users to examine the full manuscript texts of the Babylonian Talmud and allow them to search for specific words and combinations of words within the entire corpus.

The Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research was founded in 1985 and was dedicated to the memory of Professor Saul Lieberman, professor at JTS and master of Talmudic Studies in modern times. The Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research initiates, develops and disseminates sophisticated computerized research tools designed to facilitate the study of Talmud and related fields.