Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research

Created through the generosity of the Dr. Bernard Heller Foundation, the Institute honors the memory of Professor Saul Lieberman (1898–1983) and strives to maintain the high standards of scholarship and teaching that he set for his students.

The Lieberman Institute continues to develop modern and rigorous computer tools for Talmud study. The central goal of the institute is to create electronic tools that will provide searchable access to the primary textual witnesses of the Babylonian Talmud in manuscript form, genizah and other fragments, full manuscripts and early printed editions, and related bibliography. To support this goal, the following electronic research tools have been developed:

• The Sol and Evelyn Henkind Talmud Text Data Bank includes the full text of all manuscript versions and first-printed editions of the Babylonian Talmud, with sophisticated search capabilities. The computerized database provides scholars with the means to analyze the literary and stylistic features throughout the breadth and depth of the entire Talmud in its many versions. Thousands of high-resolution images of the manuscript fragments are provided to aid in in-depth study, including images of hundreds of ancient Mishnah fragments.
• The Index of References Dealing with Talmudic Literature provides researchers access to thousands of references to talmudic passages in modern research and medieval scholarship. A thousand sources are currently indexed. This includes hand-indexing of virtually the complete works of the monumental talmudic scholars J. N. Epstein and Saul Lieberman. Scholarly works in Hebrew and European languages are indexed. An online version will soon replace the popular CD- ROM.

The databases can be accessed through the computer terminal at the reference desk of The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary, and are also distributed by subscription. The Sol and Evelyn Henkind Talmud Text Data Bank has recently been added to the JTSA SSL VPN Secure Access System.

For more information, please email liebermaninst@hotmail.com or talmud@netvision.net.il.