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scholarly tools
This morning I asked my rabbi to recommend a concordance (I've had too many cases of wanting to know "where else is this word used?" and not having an answer), and he gave me one. Wow! He showed me the one he uses, and then showed me the one he deprecated when he got that one, and then ended up giving me the latter -- which is a better fit with my skill level anyway.
(To a lot of people, the concordance is Strong's. But it's indexed in English and intended for Christian study. I want the Hebrew and I don't care about the Christian books and Greek variations. Well ok, that can be interesting too in other contexts, but I don't want it in my way when I'm trying to study our sources.)
When studying torah I often want to have at least three books to hand -- the torah text (Hebrew and English; I use the JPS bilingual edition), the BDB (lexicon) to supply explanations and definitions of individual words, and a concordance. And maybe also commentaries. (Yeah, torah study wants to occupy a table, though I often attempt it while sitting in a recliner.) Now I have all three essential tools. I wonder how long it will be before someone acquires all the necessary rights and publishes an electronic version where all of this is hyperlinked. That would be easier than shuffling paper, though it wouldn't be usable on Shabbat.
(To a lot of people, the concordance is Strong's. But it's indexed in English and intended for Christian study. I want the Hebrew and I don't care about the Christian books and Greek variations. Well ok, that can be interesting too in other contexts, but I don't want it in my way when I'm trying to study our sources.)
When studying torah I often want to have at least three books to hand -- the torah text (Hebrew and English; I use the JPS bilingual edition), the BDB (lexicon) to supply explanations and definitions of individual words, and a concordance. And maybe also commentaries. (Yeah, torah study wants to occupy a table, though I often attempt it while sitting in a recliner.) Now I have all three essential tools. I wonder how long it will be before someone acquires all the necessary rights and publishes an electronic version where all of this is hyperlinked. That would be easier than shuffling paper, though it wouldn't be usable on Shabbat.
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http://www.onlinebibleusa.com/bw5_whatisit.html
I'm sure there must be others, perhaps even Jewish scholarly ones with JPS.
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I have the Soncino talmud on CD, which came with tanach and some other stuff -- Hebrew and English, but not linked and the menus for the Hebrew items are entirely in Hebrew -- so if you want to look up the Hebrew for a particular passage in talmud, say, you have to navigate to it. Don't remember which order your tractate is in? Well, that just adds variety to your search. :-)
Anyway, this is a tool I use (in translation); I look up all the parsha bits that cite talmud to validate the citation (and sometimes pick up some changes in the telling). It's useful for other things too. But while it has a tanach, I find I don't use that very much as it's configured.
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Well, if you can search the Hebrew text, why do you need a concordance? :-)
It's been a while since I saw the program (my ex-wife got our copy, which made sense because her Hebrew skills are an order of magnitude, at least, better than mine), but I think it was the "Judaic Classics" software, which is different than the Soncino. I seem to recall menus being in English, although the text was all Hebrew. I think you could go to, say, Shmot, and then open a parallel window with Rashi's comments next to it.
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Depends. If you get a search-results page and tally, you don't. If you just have to keep searching until you loop or stop, that's more of a hassle sometimes. It can be useful to know that there are 67 uses of this word but only 3 in torah, or whatever. Also, there are times when just seeing the citation answers the question and I don't have to follow it.
I would definitely use an online concordance that gives me the results list. But I also like having the book.
"Judaic Classics" software, which is different than the Soncino
Ah. I have that; it came bundled with Soncino. Or maybe the other way around. It was a special sale; Soncino is what drew me in. I haven't actually tried to use the Rashi, since not only is it in Hebrew, presumably unpointed, but it's also probably in Rashi script, and I'm not ready to tackle that yet. But that said, I should at least take a look.
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