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?
Category: Guides & Recommendations | מדריכים והמלצות
Looking for online Jewish learning resources, how-to guides for research, and recommended readings lists? All of those are filed here.
54 Essential Books in Jewish Studies
Jump to: Orientations & Methodological Questions | Overviews & Thematic Studies | Antiquity, Bible & Rabbinics | Medieval & Early Modern | Modernity, Holocaust, Israel Studies The challenge of defining essential books in Jewish studies is as difficult as it is needed. Difficult, because there is so much important work out there and how do…
How to Access Jewish Manuscripts
How to read manuscript numbers Reading manuscript numbers is easy, once you know the standard abbreviations. Take for example: BL Ms. Or. 5024 which means British Library manuscript Oriental 5024, or literally, at least at some point in history, the 5,024th handwritten book on the shelf in the “Oriental” collection of the British Library in…
Building a Jewish Bookshelf
Here’s what I’d put on a standard Jewish bookshelf, with some notes and tips. Siddur and Machzorim This is a highly personal (and denominational) choice, but obviously it’s a cornerstone of any Jewish bookshelf. Both siddurim and machzorim of all the types (and haggadot) are highly collectible in a productive way, by which I mean,…
Where to Find Jewish Texts Online
Open-Access Text Repositories AlHaTorah.org — I’m a big fan of this always-growing and fully open-access repository of classical texts, and, notably, artworks. The reading interface for the Hebrew texts is highly customizable and easy to read both on mobile and web. It’s edited by rabbis and scholars knowledgeable in the textual witnesses (the manuscripts upon…