Virtual tour

Welcome to the Virtual Tour of the Responsa Project's Global Jewish Database.
This guided tour presents only a few of Responsa's sophisticated features.
Here you see the first screen of the program which will guide you through 3000 years of Jewish heritage.
In this tour you will see how easy it is to search Responsa's huge database.
By clicking on Tools you can change the menu language to Hebrew.
To continue the tour click on the Search button

This is the Simple Search window of the Global Jewish Database.
Suppose you want to find all passages containing the words in the Responsa databases.
Type in the search line and then click "Search."
It's as simple as that.

To continue the tour click on the Search button

In seconds the computer searches all the books in the CD and reveals that the words appear 6500 times in the various Responsa databases.
Brief extracts of the relevant results are displayed on screen. To see the full text of any of these results double-click the first line of the result - for example the fifth item displayed on screen Rashi on Genesis 2:14.

To display the full text of the desired result click the first line (highlighted in yellow).

The full text of the relevant result is now displayed on the screen.
One of Responsa's most useful features is the hyperli nks between the different texts in the database.
For example if you click on the reference cited by Rashi on verse 19 (highlighted and indicated by the green arrow) a new window appears displaying the relevant verse (Genesis 1:25) on screen.
This was a relatively simple search. Now you will see a more complex search that deals with Jewish law in modern life.
To continue the tour click on the Search button.

Suppose you want to look up information about keeping medical information confidential.
Using the Regular Search window type the text of the first word that you are looking for ("secret") as Component 1. In the window of Component 2 type the second word ("medical").
Next click the Prefixes and Suffixes buttons. The computer will then search for all possible combinations of the words you specified including variant forms - for example .

To continue the tour click on the Search button.

The Global Jewish Database has found 14 results about keeping medical information confidential. All of these results appear in the Responsa literature.
In order to display the full text of any of the results click its ti tle; for example click the third result.

To continue click the third result (highlighted in yellow).

On the screen you can now see the relevant responsum by Rabbi Eliezer Waldenburg. This text discusses whether a doctor must inform his or her patient's family if the patient suffers from a contagious disease or report to the Ministry of Transportation if the patient is epileptic.
The Global Jewish Database also includes the biographies of all the responsa authors. See the next screen.

To continue and display the biography of Rabbi Waldenburg click View and then Biography from the main menu.

The virtual tour of Responsa is over.
The Global Jewish Database includes many other exciting features.

Read more about the Global Jewish Database features.

Return to the homepage.

Thank you for taking the tour of the Global Jewish Database.