Sefaria is an online open sourcefree contentdigital library of Jewish texts. It was founded in 2011 by former Googleproject manager Brett Lockspeiser and journalist-author Joshua Foer. Calling itself "a living library of Jewish texts", Sefaria relies on volunteers to add texts and translations. Texts are provided under a free license both in Hebrew and in translation. The website also provides a tool for creating source sheets. Sefaria is a non-profit organization. The technology is maintained by a team of 18 engineers.
History
Sefaria was originally founded in 2011, by Joshua Foer, and Brett Lockspeiser, a former product manager at Google. 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, twelve apps used Sefaria's API and database. Also in 2015, Sefaria reached a deal to use Urim Publications' translations of the Tanakh and commentaries. Sefaria's website received a major redesign in 2016, alongside the release of new apps for smartphones running iOS and Android, and a complete English translation of Rashi's commentary on the Torah. 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. In 2019, Lockspeiser was listed among Forward Magazine's 50 under 50 for this advancement in Torah technology.
Content
Sefaria has a vast library of Jewish text, including Tanakh, Talmud, and Jewish prayers alongside sources in philosophy, mysticism, Jewish law, and newer works. Sefaria's content comes from a variety of sources. Books in the public domain are scanned and processed by OCR software, which a team corrects and formats. Other online sources such as are also used. Some publishers have also provided works directly to Sefaria. Sefaria also produces visualizations of the texts in its corpus, such as illustrating connections between the Tanakh and Talmud.
Translations
Some works, such as Tanakh and the Talmud, feature English translations. These are either crowdsourced, provided by publishers, or in the publicdomain. Some translations are written by Sefaria.
Features
Links
Many works are linked with their respective commentaries. For example, clicking on a verse in Tanach will open a windowon the side, allowing the user to open a commentary on that verse.
