In this lesson, you will encounter some of Sefaria’s new and and experimental features. Some were built recently (or are coming very soon!). Others have existed for some time, but the future ways they might evolve, as well as their precise role in the Jewish studies classroom, is still being developed. We welcome your thoughts and feedback once you become familiar with these tools!
The video below will take you through some of the highlights, with a focus on how they have been used in teaching contexts.
1) Visualize our data: Because Sefaria digitizes all content, our site contains a lot of data which can then be presented in different ways. When we turn our data into images or graphs, we call them visualizations. These visualizations can often be useful for presenting information to students, and helping learners to see texts in new ways.
To open visualizations, click the word "Visualizations" at the bottom of the Sefaria homepage (the page with the Torah scribe video).
Link Explorer - Connections Between Talmud and Tanakh
- Click on the picture of the visualization to open
- Hover over a name of a book or a line on the visualization. Both the books of the Tanakh and the tractates of Talmud are clickable so you can refine your search in either direction.
- Click on a line to open a connection. Clicking on the name of a book shows all of the connections with the Talmud. Further click to narrow down. Each connection has its own line.
- Clicking on an individual connection opens the text in the library.
Jerusalem Gardens - A collection of sources referring to Jerusalem
- Click on the picture of the visualization to open.
- Click on the graphs to select parameters. More than one parameter may be selected on each graph.
- Texts matching the selected parameters appear on the page.
- Click on a text to open in the library.
Links Through Rashi - Explore how Rashi connects verses of Torah to one another when he quotes one verse in his commentary on another.
- Click on the picture of the visualization to open.
- Hover over the grey ring to reveal connections.
- A black title reference represents the selected verse.
- A green title reference means that the Rashi on that verse quotes the selected verse.
- A red title reference is quoted by the Rashi on the selected verse.
- Click a verse to open it with Rashi's commentary.
Mitzvot in Sefer HaChinukh - Explore how different categories of Mitzvot connect to one another through this parallel sets chart.
- Click on the picture of the visualization to open.
- Drag the dimensions and categories to reorder them.
- You can also click the “alpha” or “size” links that appear next to the dimension name on mouseover, to order the categories by name or frequency.
- Click on any of the segments to see the specific commandments in each category,
Click here for an example of a teacher using the Link Explorer to spark classroom conversations.
2) Highlight and filter to teach text skills: This tool is one of the ways that Sefaria hopes to experiment with leveraging our technology to help learners dissect texts and become stronger readers. Highlight allows you or your students to tag specific words or sentences in a text, associating them with different colors, and then filter them, so that only certain parts of the text appear. For example, a Biblical text could be divided based on who is speaking (as in the example below). Dividing this text accurately shows a working understand of the content, and filtering the text by showing, for example, only the parts that are said by Moses, can lead to an interesting perspective on the story and then be a jumping off point for discussions.
Entering highlighting mode:
After you have added your texts to the source sheet and saved the sheet for the first time, select "Toggle Highlight Mode" from the "File" menu. Notice that it will say "Highlight Mode is On" in the top right-hand corner of your screen.
To leave Highlight Mode, click "Toggle Highlight Mode" again from the "File menu.
Creating tags and highlighting text:
- Select the text that you would like to highlight.
- Name the tag in the dialogue box and click save.
3. Continue naming tags according to your needs.
4. Each time text is selected, the drop down menu of tags will open. Select the tag and click "Save".
Note: Make sure to select only the text and not the blank space after the text.
The highlighting will appear whenever you are in Highlight Mode. If you toggle out of Highlight mode (from the "File" menu), you will see the text without the highlights.
Segmenting the text:
Select "Paragraph View" from the "Highlight Tools" menu and the text will be segmented according to the highlights. Click "Line-by-Line" to return.
Filtering the text:
Select "Filter" from the "Highlights Tools" menu. You will be given the option to filter the text according to highlights. Unselect the tags that you want to filter out.
The text will now appear with only the selected passages.
The segment and filter features can be used together.
3) Look up words in Sefaria’s dictionaries: Sefaria contains a full Biblical dictionary. Double click on any word in Tanakh, and the definition(s) will appear on the side, as well as information about what part of speech it is. This feature is extremely helpful when moving students towards greater independence in reading Biblical texts, and can also be a great feature to use when reading verses together in class.
And, a new feature: Sefaria recently added both the Klein Hebrew Dictionary and the Jastrow Dictionary for Talmud for use on the website. As with our Tanakh dictionary, double click on a word to see the dictionary entry. However, while in its early stages, users look up words in the dictionary, searching through that work, in order to look up a word or phrase. You can do this either by opening the dictionary and scrolling through, or by typing an entry into the search bar.
4) Lesson #8 assignment:
For this assignment you will be experimenting with new features and reflecting on their use in your learning environment.
When you are ready to get started, click here and follow the instructions! Remember to click "save" right away so that your work is saved. Once you click the blue save button, it will disappear and be replaced by a "share" button - a good indication that you have saved your work!
For questions, email [email protected].