 | |
| Available in | English,Hebrew,Yiddish |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | Brett Lockspeiser,Joshua Foer |
| CEO | Daniel Septimus |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | No |
| Launched | 2011 |
| Current status | Active |
Sefaria is an onlineopen source,[1]free content,digital library of Jewish texts. It was founded in 2011 by former Google project manager Brett Lockspeiser and journalist-authorJoshua Foer.[2][3][4] Promoted as a "living library of Jewish texts", Sefaria relies partially upon volunteers to add texts and translations.[5][6] The site providescross-references and interconnections between various texts.[3] Hebrew, Aramaic, andJudeo-Arabic texts are provided under afree license in the original and in translation. The website also provides a tool for creating source sheets.[7]
Sefaria is maintained by aneponymous non-profit organization[8][9] which employs 18 engineers.[10] According to theirchief data officer Lev Israel, in 2019, the service received 250,000 unique visitors monthly.[11]
The nameSefaria derives from the wordssefer, or "book",[3] andsifria ("library") inHebrew.[3][12][13]
Sefaria was originally founded in 2011 by journalist Joshua Foer and Brett Lockspeiser, a former product manager atGoogle. 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. By 2015, twelveapps used Sefaria'sAPI and database. Also in 2015, Sefaria reached a deal to useUrim Publications' translations of theTanakh and commentaries.[14]
Sefaria's website received a major redesign in 2016, alongside the release of new apps forsmartphones runningiOS andAndroid, and a complete English translation ofRashi's commentary on theTorah. 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 William Davidson Talmud.[15] In 2020, the site announced apilot program to introduce its model to some secular works such as Americanconstitutional studies.[16]
Lockspeiser was recognized byForward Magazine's 2019Forward 50 list for his role in creating Sefaria.[17]
Sefaria offers a library of Jewish texts, includingTanakh,Talmud, and Jewish prayers alongside sources in philosophy, mysticism, Jewish law, and newer works.[18][19] Sefaria's content comes from a variety of sources. Books in the public domain are scanned and processed usingoptical character recognition software, which a team then corrects and formats. Other online sources such as On Your Way[20] are also used. Some publishers have also provided works directly to Sefaria.[21]
Sefaria also producesvisualizations of the texts in its corpus, such as illustrating connections between the Tanakh and Talmud.[22]
In 2021, Sefaria announced a major addition of a complete translation ofIbn Ezra's Torah commentaries provided by H. Norman Strickman and Arthur M. Silver, one of the only resources to have a complete translation of these works in English.[23] A new English translation of the Tanakh was made available in 2022 by Sefaria in collaboration withJewish Publication Society. This version translated genderidiomatically, rather thanliterally, and notably referred to God in a gender-neutral manner.[24] The addition of this translation received some criticism from some Orthodox Jewish users, with Orthodox rabbis calling to stop using Sefaria completely, although there is continued availability of translations from Orthodox-oriented publishing houses.[25][26]
Many works are linked with their respective commentaries.[27] For example, clicking on a verse in Tanakh will open a window on the side, allowing the user to open a commentary on that verse.
Sefaria's Source Sheet Builder allows users to create a page with source text from Sefaria.[28][9] Source Sheets may be published online, within Sefaria's ecosystem, and they may also be downloaded asPDF files, which are easy to print.[29]
