Urim publications and Sefaria strike unprecedented agreement
From Sefaria Project blog
Sefaria is building a free, living library of Jewish texts and their interconnections. Our scope is Torah in the broadest sense, from Tanakh to Talmud to Zohar to modern texts and all the volumes of commentary in between. We are inspired by the biblical affirmation (Deuteronomy 33:4) that the Torah is the rightful inheritance of the entire Jewish people — and we’re obsessed with imagining new ways for diffusing Jewish knowledge in the digital age.
As part of this commitment we provide texts in both Hebrew and translation (English, for now). We have imported public domain translations, and allowed users to create crowd-sourced translations, but that’s not the only avenue we have been pursuing. We are also actively working with authors and publishers to release texts from copyright restrictions, making them free for use and reuse via Sefaria.
Today Sefaria is pleased to announce a first-of-it’s-kind deal. Urim Publications has agreed to release one of their books from copyright restrictions via the Creative Commons CC0 license (making it free for use and reuse in any way). Urim has released Mikraot Gedolot Hachut Hameshulash by Eliyahu Munk under the CC0 license, and the content is already being added to the Sefaria website. The book contains English translations of major Torah commentaries written by four medieval rabbis: Seforno, Rashbam, Radak, and Rabeinu Chananel, all expertly rendered by Eliyahu Munk.
