About Us

HaMapah aims to bring modern tools of quantitative and geographic analysis to Rabbinic literature. The tools we are developing allow us to quantify rabbinic authority quickly and easily. The visual representations of the data we harvest show spheres of influence through time and across space. They have already yielded numerous insights and surprises about the shape of rabbis’ network of correspondence and the trajectory of their careers. These phenomena, which have never been noticed before, raise a host of new questions, large and small, for a new generation of scholars and historians to consider.

Elli Fischer is a graduate student in Jewish History at Tel Aviv University whose research focuses on the construction of rabbinic authority as reflected in the writing of responsa. He is an independent writer, translator, editor, and rabbi.

Moshe Schorr is a Computer Science student at the Technion, Research Assistant at University of Haifa, and a graduate of Yeshivat Har Etzion.

HaMapah is a member and grantee of e-lijah Lab, a digital humanities laboratory at The Department of Jewish History and Bible Studies in the University of Haifa. The laboratory initiates and conducts various crowdsourcing and citizen science projects to integrate the wisdom of the masses in the fields of Jewish history, Jewish thought, and Bible.

8 thoughts on “About Us”

  1. Interested in a bibliography on theories of rabbinic authoity. Can you provide cites for the Katz and Baron you mention? I’m an analytic legal philosopher hoping to do a chapter on rabbinic authority in a larger work on authority.

  2. I’m interested in finding out about my family. My great grandfather was a dayan in early 20th century Hungary. I understand that Hungarian rabbis generally published their responsa. How could I find out if his were published.Thanks

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