Category: Resources & How To
Looking for online Jewish learning resources, how-to guides for research, and other tips for learners and scholars? All of those are filed here.
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Jewish Learning Starter Pack: A Book List and Guide for Beginners
New to Jewish learning? I was raised secular with just a little bit of Hebrew school, so I had to start nearly from scratch as an adult. I ended up with a Ph.D. in Jewish studies and learned full-time in yeshiva for four years. (You can read more about my story here.) I’m here to…
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Making Aliyah (with lots of books and kids)? Here are all my Aliyah Tips
My family made aliyah in the summer of 2024 with kids from upper elementary through high school—and a cat—after several years of planning. In terms of specific how-to instructions for the application process and general tips on how schools and healthcare work, there’s lots of up-to-date info to be had on the Nefesh b’Nefesh website…
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How to Start Learning Talmud
In traditional Jewish learning, we often refer to the “sea of Talmud.” This is not merely a picturesque metaphor; it expresses a key characteristic of the Talmud. Dipping into it is like entering a vast sea: there is no beginning or end, and all of it connected to the other parts and to its depths.…
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How to Set up a Note-Taking System in Notion
In case you hadn’t guessed already, I’m the person with the color-coded notes that everyone borrows. 🤓 Back in the day, I took handwritten notes. I went from handwriting to typing into (usually unruly) Word docs. Organizationally, I never progressed beyond “find in document.” Until I discovered Notion. I came upon Notion as a solution…
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How to Organize Google Drive for Research & Writing
You already use files every day and probably have some way of organizing them, even if it’s throwing a folder on your desktop called PROJECT X (ahem, like some people I know and love). Whether this is you, or whether organizing is your hobby (hi), you can make your work life immeasurably better by thinking…
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How to Check your Girsa (Text) of the Talmud using Hachi Garsinan
The Talmud, being a massive corpus, is often subject to questions of girsa—textual variants. This is a live question already in the Gemara itself, which occasionally treats girsa issues in the Mishnah (e.g., חסורי מחסרא והכי קתני). It is also a not uncommon issue raised by Rishonim, and then in the period of the Acharonim…
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How to Be a Book-Loving Minimalist
I’m not a hardcore minimalist (like, I own things), but I’m very drawn to minimalism: white walls, matchy pantry containers, capsule wardrobe, that sort of thing. As you might imagine, this does not jibe particularly well with being a bookworm, especially an Orthodox Jewish one who does lots of reading over Shabbat. But yes, I…
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How to Use Zotero to Organize your Research
Zotero is how I perform feats of research magic. I use it to: It’s like having a personally curated library. The first thing I do when I start a project is search my references and call up my reading notes. Zotero isn’t hard to use, but it has a learning curve and it can be…
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Setting Up a Personal Knowledge Management System
A Personal Knowledge Management is a way of saving, processing, and organizing the information and files you use every day in your work and life, so that you can access them easily when needed. Basically, it’s dealing with your digital stuff so it’s organized and works for you. Personal Knowledge Management is my secret sauce.…
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Wikipedia
Like most scholars, my attitude towards Wikipedia used to be one of ire and resigned hostility. Then I learned to stop worrying and love the wiki. What happened to make me change my mind?