The Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Israel Government’s department of education and culture have jointly published the first half of a concordance to the Talmud, the central text of Hebrew literature and the authority for Jewish law and religion, it was announced today by Dr. Louis Finkelstein, Chancellor of the Seminary. The concordance, which has never existed before, is at the letter Kaf, the 11th letter in the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet.
The concordances are alphabetical indexes of the principal words of the Talmud in their immediate contexts. They enable the user to find a specific passage, name or idea easily and quickly. Dr. Finkelstein said. He said that the long-needed reference works were being produced in Jerusalem under grants from the Maxwell and Fannie Abbell Research Fund of the Seminary. The work was begun by Rabbi Chaim J. Kosovsky, a leading Israeli philologist and Talmud authority who devised his own word location system based on graphs and mathematical principals. After his death in 1962, the task was taken up by the rabbi’s two sons. Benjamin and Moshe.
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