Responsa Project Release 17+ (2009)
About the Directors
Retrieval Methodology
 

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 (questions and answers - shut, in Hebrew). 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 theJewish 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, and new versions have been issued more-or-less annually, with the latest version, 17+, issued in April 2009. Each version includes new texts in the Responsa databases and improvements in the retrieval software.

Israel Prize

In 2007, the Responsa Project was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for Torah Literature.

Responsa Project Release 17+ (2009)

Today the Responsa Project DVD contains more than 92,000 Responsa and more than 455,000 hypertext links between the databases, totalling 210 million words. The program uses an advanced, user-friendly Windows interface, with powerful cross-referencing and search options. Extensive biographical data on the authors of Responsa texts have been added as well, along with a unique context-sensitive dictionary of abbreviations.

Many new and important books of Responsa and other Judaic texts have been included in the most recent versions of the Responsa DVD.  Among the Responsa Databases includes:

• Bible and Bible Commentaries

• Mishnah and Mishnah Commentaries

• Tosefta

• Minor Tractates

• Talmud Bavli and Commentaries

• Talmud Yerushalmi

• Halachic Midrashim

• Aggadic Midrashim

• Zohar

• Ge’onim

• Halacha and Minhagim

• Sifrei Mitzvot

• Mussar and Jewish Thought

• Rambam  and Commentaries

• Tur and Beit Yosef

• Shulchan Aruch and Commentaries

•  Sifrei Chasidut

• Sifrei Kelalim and Seder Ha-Dorot

•  Responsa

• Talmudic Encyclopedia

For a more detailed list of the Responsa Databases and their contents see Contents of Responsa Databases

Version 17+ includes new volumes of responsa; a significant expansion in the Bible Commentaries including Malbim, Sforno, Chizkuni, Or Ha-Chayim  and more; a significant expansion in the Commentaries on the Mishnah and Talmud including Shittah Mekubbetzet, Tosfot Rosh, the completion of Meiri and Mordecai, and more; the addition of the Bach commentary on the Tur;  as well as 28 searchable volumes of the Talmudic Encyclopedia, a subject index to various Responsa and Poskim, and an index to articles about halachah. In addition, a set of Encyclopedias were added – Biographies of Talmudic rabbis and information about their teachers and disciples; Encyclopedia of Talmudical concepts – 5000 entries of Talmudic foundations, rules, and concepts, explained in a clear and easy style; Encyclopedia of Holiday Customs contains definitions and brief descriptions of numerous customs related to Jewish holidays

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.

Dr. 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 adivisory members are  Professor Aviezri Fraenkel and Professor Leib Moskovitz.

Retrieval Methodology

The current retrieval engine is based on classical free-text searches for Boolean word combinations using an inverse index. When the project was initially launched, even experts did not consider this approach feasible, and vast efforts were devoted to the manual creation of text-indexes according to selected keywords. As is well-known, these efforts were fruitless, while the original approach proposed by Professor Aviezri Fraenkel is still utilized in our current system.

Nevertheless, scholars have created indexes to many halakhic works over the ages. We present the manual indexes as another full text database, which can be searched by specifying additional keyword combinations - those that exist in the indexes, which tend to use more modern and standardized language. This "simulated thesaurus" approach may aid users who are not familiar with some of the technical terminology used in the rest of the database. It can also provide seasoned users with additional search results.