Judaic Digital Library open to public

The Judaic Digital Library is now open to the public. Varda Books (Skokie, Illinois), the leading publisher of digital Judaica, recently announced this accessibility free of charge, including unlimited power search and reading of the Basic Reference Collection.

One of my favorites in the collection is the complete seven-volume "Legends of the Jews" by Louis Ginzberg. If you've never seen this before, do take a look!

For a nominal subscription fee, use advanced editing functions (copy/paste, print, bookmarking, annotations, and personalization tools) for research and scholarly study.

JDL is a massive collection of outstanding books in the area of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies. A list of mainly English texts in the Basic Reference Collection can be seen here. The collection has been carefully prepared for computer-assisted reading and research as well as Jewish and Judaic learning.

The scope of the collection is broad and thus should be attractive not only to scholars but also to educators, Rabbis, journalists, librarians, students, and anyone who is looking for reliable, authoritative, easily accessible information on Jewish history, theology, ritual, Torah/Bible, art, sports, and other topics.

The basic collection includes: JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, JPS Torah and Bible Commentaries, International Critical Commentaries on almost all books of Tanakh, Cambridge Bible Commentaries, Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Bible Lexicon (Complete and Unabridged), Jewish Encyclopedia, in 13 volumes, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (13 volumes), most recent JPS edition of Louis Ginzberg's monumental Legends of the Jews (7 volumes),3-volume Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmail, Pesikta de-Rab Kahane, Tanna Debbe Eliahu, Tractate Taanit, Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer and other collections of Midrashim and ancient sermons.

Most of JDL's Biblical commentaries have been prepared to work interactively with the renowned JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: clicking on any biblical reference forces the Tanakh to pop up in a separate window with the requested original Hebrew text and the renowned English translation, side-by-side.

Among its many award-winning titles are those authored by such renowned thinkers as Cecil Roth, Chouraqui, Solo Baron, Abrahams, Alter, Netanyahu, Bentwich, Frazer, Bauer, Chomsky, Jacobs, Baek, Kaplan, Ash, Yellin, Hartman, Scholem, Twersky, Borowitz, Gillman, Lamm, Maimonides, Baron, Radin, Lea, Luzzatto, Finkelstein, Freehof, Dorff, Modrzejewski, Ibn Gabirol, Henrich Graetz, Simon Dubnow, Judah HaLevy, among others.

Have a website? You can even add the JDL search box to your site by clicking here, and copying the code. Both Tracing the Tribe and the International Jewish Graveyard Rabbit have added the JDL search box to help readers who want more information on a specific topic.