Do we have any Torah buffs among our ASE readers? For those unbuffed, Torah is the Hebrew word for the five book of Moses. Used more colloquially, it is the entire body of Jewish law from the time when the Torah was given at Mount Sinai (belief of which is up to you of course) to when the latest commentary on the Talmud was published…probably yesterday. These things happen every day. (You don’t have to believe that. You can just look it up.) So if you’re a religious Jew, interested in religious Judaism, or in otherwise knowing about Jewish law and customs, then go to 4Torah.

Late last year, we reported on Hebrewbooks.org, where we brought you to the largest database of Jewish books in PDF form. But that’s only good if you can read the stuff in the original. This is for the more casual, more culturally relevant search that will get you up to date with what’s going on, now, in the Torah world.

The above are the results for a search of my brother, Rabbi Zev Farber of Atlanta, GA. Everything checks out, articles he wrote, events he appeared at, the Yeshiva (Jewish Law school) he went to, classes he taught and teaches. Type in a Torah topic, and you’ll get stuff on that, too.

One thing I noticed that is definitely worth noting is that 4Torah won’t give you bogus results, and its database is carefully filtered to give you legitimate Torah. Of course, the definition of that is a subject of debate, but to take an extreme example, say you’re going a Google search and you don’t know much about Judaism, and you come upon the Messianic Jewish movement, which is basically a front for missionary work targeted at disaffected Jews. Google won’t protect you from that. 4Torah will.

Slightly less noticeable but also important, is that it won’t lead you to unsanctioned, iffy institutions. For example, a search for Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, will lead you to serious articles from reputed sources, and not to the Kabbalah Centre, Madonna’s and Brittney Spears’ hangout where they pass around really expensive red strings and $80 holy water and tell you you’re healed from demons or something, though your wallet is a lot lighter.

So as someone involved in this world, I can tell you that it’s a safe hub for those who are looking for something serious. If you want holy water, go to Google.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.