Guide to Contributing

If you can spare 10 minutes, you can bring one piece of Jewish learning into the Public Domain. Some contributions require scholarly knowledge; some are more like (holy) data-entry that anyone with an interest in Jewish texts can do.

About the Public Domain

Everything that you contribute to Sefaria (texts and data like connections) is published with a Public License (Public Domain, CC0, CC-BY, or CC BY-SA) so that anyone in the future will be free to copy and build upon it. By contributing to Sefaria you are actually contributing to the Public Domain. Even if Sefaria can't finish its ambitious project, the next person or group to try will be able to pick up right where we left off.

Ways You Can Contribute

1. Add Connections
2. Correct Errors
3. Add Translations

1. Add Connections

Our tradition is full of connections between texts. We want to make a complete list of these connections in a form that a computer can understand. Any time Sefaria knows about connected texts, it shows a portion of the connected text on the right hand side of the screen.

You may be able to look up connections in resources like the Torah Temimah, or you may find a citation in a place like Wikisource and simply need to enter it.

There are many types of connections we're looking for:

Commentary: One text explicitly comments on another.
Quotation: The words of one text appear quoted in another.
Reference: One text refers to another.
Summary: One text summarizes the other.
Explication: One text explicates the meaning of another.
Related Passage: Two texts are related or parallel in a way worth comparing.

To add a connection follow these steps:

1. Log in to your Sefaria account
2. Select the text, click on it to open the "Resources" panel.
3. Click “Tools” and then "Advanced", and then “Add Connection”.

2. Correct Errors

If you see an error in Sefaria, please don't stand idly by! The more people who feel a responsibility to improve Sefaria's quality, the better it will get. Report the issue directly by clicking on the "Feedback" button in the resource panel of the website and selecting "Report an issue with the text" or selecting "Report Error" on the app.

If you recognize a problem but don't know how to fix it, please report it to [email protected].

3. Translate Texts

If you're comfortable translating Hebrew, creating new translations of classic texts and offering them to the world is an incredibly impactful way to share talents. There's a huge opportunity here, because so much of the basics have yet to be started. Search online and you'll find dozens of translations of Rashi on Tanach; but what about Rambam, Ibn Ezra or Sforno?

Following the success of sites like Wikipedia and Wikisource, Sefaria has adopted a collaborative approach. Anyone may start a new Community Translation, and anyone else may step in to suggest improvements. For more on adding and editing Community Translations, see here.