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Bar Ilan's Judaic Library

Torah Educational Software's

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This copy is made available to UVa users only.

Please Note

Bar Ilan's Judaic Library is a commercial product held by us under a licensing agreement with Torah Educational Software. Access to the CD is restricted to on-site use by students faculty and staff at the University of Virginia. The Electronic Text Center does not have the rights to give or sell general access to this material.

Those interested in purchasing a copy of Bar Ilan's Judaic Library should contact Torah Educational Software. Please see our contact information page for details.


Scope and Contents

Bar Ilan's Judaic Library, version 10, (also called The Responsa Project) is a CD-ROM containing a wide array of classic Judaic texts, in Hebrew, along with a user interface for accessing these texts. You can search all or part of the collection, or easily compare related texts on-screen (e.g. the Babylonian Talmud and Rashi's commentary on it). Among many others, this CD-ROM includes the following texts:

  • Hebrew Bible
  • Various Bible commentaries
  • Mishnah
  • Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds
  • Rashi's commentary on Talmud Bavli
  • Halachic and aggadic Midrashim
  • Responsa from the 16th to 20th centuries

(For a complete list of texts, choose Contents from the Help menu, then choose the help topic List of Books and Editions.)

NOTE: All of these texts are in Hebrew. English translations are not included. However, menus and help screens are all in English.


Starting up Bar Ilan's Judaic Library

  1. Place the disc on the CD-ROM tray of the PC, and close the tray.
  2. Click the Start button (in the lower left-hand corner of the screen). Move to Programs and click on Bar Ilan (Responsa 10). If you do not see these menu options, please ask a staff member for assistance.
  3. The program will launch. After an introductory screen, you will be presented with the program's main window.

Using Bar Ilan's Judaic Library

NOTE: The program includes an on-screen help system. For more information on using the software and conducting sophisticated searches, please refer to the on-screen help by choosing Contents from the Help menu.

Searching

  • First, specify the texts which you want the search to include. Click on the word Search in the menu bar at the top of the screen, and then the Choose Database button on the left-hand side. A list of available texts appears.

    NOTE: The Database, Search, and Text menu headings are not actually menus. When you click on these menu headings (and release the mouse button), another window appears instead of a drop-down menu.

    Specify which texts to include in the search by clicking on the titles you want. If a title is selected (highlighted in green) that you do not want to include, simply click on that title to deselect it. When you are finished selecting titles, click OK. Currently, the titles of the texts are not displaying correctly. There seems to be some problem with the Hebrew font used in dialog boxes (though not in the actual texts).

  • To perform a search, click the word Search in the menu bar at the top of the screen. The Search window appears. Enter the word or words you want to search for in the appropriate boxes.

    NOTE: Because the texts you are searching are in Hebrew, naturally the search terms will be in Hebrew as well. The Bar Ilan's Judaic Library program uses the standard Hebrew keyboard layout. If you are not familiar with this keyboard layout, refer to the photocopy labeled "The Hebrew Keyboard" available at the Etext Center. Alternatively, you can choose Contents from the Help menu, and then click on the help topic The Hebrew Keyboard. You will need to set-up your keyboard using the utilities within windows to conduct searches properly.

    SIMPLE EXAMPLE: For example, type mem-shin-heh (N-A-V on the English keyboard) to enter the name Mosheh as a search term.

    To conduct a more sophisticated search, click on Regular Search to choose from a variety of search options. (To return to the simpler search screen, click Simple Search.)

    When you have entered your search terms, click on Search. (To preview the number of occurrences found and exclude certain terms from the search before the search is actually performed, click Filtered Search instead.) A window containing your search results will appear.

  • To work with the search results, use the File and View menus that appear at the top of the search results window. (Note that the Display menu is available only from within a search.

Comparing Texts

You can also simply read texts on-screen (browse, rather than search) and compare related texts (such as a primary text and a commentary on it).

To browse a text, click on the word Text in the menu bar at the top of the screen. A list of texts appears. To view a complete list of available texts, click New Database. Click on the text you want, and then on the book or section of the text that you want to view. A window containing the text appears.

SIMPLE EXAMPLE: Click Text in the menu bar, then click New Database, then Bible. Finally click on shemot, and click Display Text. The beginning of shemot (Exodus) appears in a new window.

Text windows will normally contain menu options for comparing related texts. To continue this example, within this window containing shemot there is a Commentaries menu. To view, say, Rashi's commentary on Exodus, choose Rashi from the Commentaries menu. Rashi's commentary appears in its own window immediately beneath the window containing the text of Exodus. Note that as you scroll through the biblical text, the text of Rashi's commentary automatically scrolls also, so that the commentary being displayed always corresponds to the biblical text being displayed.

Advanced Features

For information on more advanced features, please refer to the extensive on-screen help system. Note that this help system is context-sensitive--that is, you can invoke the help system from within any given window and receive information specifically pertinent to that window or task.

Exiting Bar Ilan's Judaic Library

When you are finished working with this CD-ROM:

  • Choose Exit from the File menu.
  • Eject the disc from the CD-ROM drive. Please place the disc in its case and return it to an Etext Center assistant.