"Responsa" Project

Bar-Ilan has assumed a leadership role in bringing Jewish studies into the 21st century. The University is the publisher of the best selling, Israel Prize Winning “Responsa Project”, a CD-ROM that puts thousands of Jewish volumes from the Mishna to modern Responsa literature at the user’s fingertips and has sold tens of thousands of copies worldwide.

Bar-Ilan's Responsa Project CD-ROM includes the largest electronic collection of keyed-in and proofread texts of Jewish literature in the world; it is also one of the greatest Jewish projects carried out in history. The texts cover thousands of years of writing, from the Bible and the Talmud, through the Midrash and Halacha, the literature of the Geonim, the Rambam (Maimonides), Shulhan Aruch and their commentators, to the adjudicators of our time. 

This project, which is one of the brightest jewels in Bar-Ilan University's crown, commenced approximately 40 years ago. At present, three decades later – during which hundreds of men hours were invested in the development of algorithms, keying-in texts and proofreading them, it has become a veritable treasure that is accessible to all, presented on one special CD-ROM.

The textual database includes approximately 180 million words and more than 70,000 precedents in Jewish law, and is combined with highly advanced search software.