Open Access Journal: Oqimta: Studies in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature

[First posted in AWOL 8 August 2013, updated 21 November 2021]

Oqimta: Studies in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature
ISSN: 2308-1449 

Oqimta is a digitized research journal devoted to all spheres and types of talmudic and rabbinical literature – Halakha and Agada

The articles in this journal undergo academic appraisal and redaction, and are published in the accepted languages for Judaica research.

Oqimta will be appearing once a year, in digitized form, and is available free of charge to the reading public. Articles that have completed the publication process will be uploaded to the site prior to the finalization of the issue, and can be found on the "In Publication" page.

We are pleased to present the inaugural issue: Oqimta 1 (5773 [2013]) containing thirteen articles. We take this opportunity to invite you to subscribe to our mailing list (see subscribe), and to send us your submissions (see Instructions for Authors).

volume 1 (2013)
volume 2 (2014)
volume 3 (2015)
volume 4 (2016)
volume 5 (2019)
volume 6 (2020)
volume 7 (2021)

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Yitzhak (Tzahi) Blau
Watering Seeds in the Intermediate Days of the Holiday: The History of a Mishnaic Dispute (MQ 1:3) (Heb.)	Summary

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Eliyahu Rosenfeld
“A man who showed no mercy to his son and daughter, how could he show mercy to me?” Between Didacticism and Struggle in the Story of Rabbi Yossi from Yokrat (Heb.)	Summary

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Shira Shmidman
The Rami bar Hama Narrative of Zevahim 96b: A Contextual Analysis	Summary

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Yair Lipshitz and Ishay Rosen-Zvi
On Talmud as Performance: Reading Bavli Yoma 20b-21a (Heb.)	Summary

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David Sabato
Praying for Rain (Sheʾîlat Geshamim) in Israel and Diaspora: Halacha, History and Geography (Heb.)	Summary

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Participants in this volume

To download the entire volume

To download abstracts

See AWOL's full List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Elyonim veTachtonim: Electronic inventory of angels, demons and ghosts in the early rabbinic literature

Elyonim veTachtonim: Electronic inventory of angels, demons and ghosts in the early rabbinic literature

What's in the name?

A passage in tractate bMegillah 11a-b conveys a tradition of three kings who have “ruled over the whole firmament” (Heb. shloshah malkhu bakipah): Ahab, Ahasuerus and Nebuchadnezzar. These emperors, however, are surpassed in proficiency and the range of power by king Solomon about whom it is said that “he ruled over the denizens of the upper world as well as of the lower (Heb. al haelyonim veal hatachtonim)”. The phrase itself came to function as a merism denoting the totality of the supernatural creatures, both good and evil.

What's inside?

Elyonim veTachtonim is also the code name for the project aimed at reconstructing the comprehensive inventory of the entities of various classes in the early rabbinic literature [ERL]. Since the task is laborious, the sources vast and the human resources scarce, the project expands gradually but slowly.

What's the purpose?

First of all, the database serves the function of a specialized thematic concordance and as such provides the means for a quick localization and juxtaposition of all the appearances of a given entity. Second, the detailed division into separate units allows the introduction of the quantitative methods of analysis, some of which are already published in the "summaries" sheets of the database. Third, the manipulation with the hashtags and filtering commands makes it possible to discern some particular regularities like the correlation between the given entity, topic and genre. This is just a small fraction of the potential applications, and the larger the database the more diverse the purposes. 

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Digital Mishnah

Digital Mishnah

 

The Digital Mishnah Project will provide users with a database of digitized manuscripts of the Mishnah from around the world, along with tools for collation, comparison, and analysis. This demo provides fully marked up transcriptions of several major witnesses of tractate Neziqin (Bava Qamma, Bava Metsi'a, and Bava Batra), and illustrates basic functionalities. In addition the transcribed witnesses include several Genizah fragments, with an emphasis on those fragments that join other fragments to make up larger manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses are referred to by the catalog number in the Sussmann Thesaurus (S+0+Sussmann no.). Printed editions are provisionally given serial numbers.

Last update: 7/17/2014.

The browse function presents metadata and a rendering of the transcription that which can be viewed with their metadata and approximately as laid out in the original text.

The compare function allows for the detailed comparison of witnesses. At its core it runs a set of texts through CollateX, which aligns matching words ("tokens"). The Digital Mishnah site remerges this output with the original textual data and represents the results both as an alignment table, and as a text with critical apparatus. The user can determine the passage, the witnesses, and the order. Because we anticipate that a number of users will prefer a parallel-column ("synoptic") presentation, the collate page shows an arrangement of the selected passage arranged in parallel columns by witness in the user-specified order. Note: The previous version of this set of functions is at collate. 

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