Every Tag and Tag: Annotating Hard-to-Note Phenomena in Jewish Studies

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

The work of the scholar in the Humanities moves in a pendulum-like manner between close reading, scrutinizing over a small piece of a bigger corpus, and a bird's eye review of its larger contexts. Both the possibilities and the challenges of seeing the forest AND the trees are striking when dealing with even larger corpora, in what can be called 'distant reading' (following Moretti). One of the tools to navigate this kind of Digital Humanities study is tagging and annotating texts.
Many times, annotation focuses on the most basic and generic speech parts and entities. However, in the Humanities, we strive to approach the delicate aspects of texts: style and poetics, allegories and metaphors, tone and structure. These are much more difficult to tag and annotate and are challenging to consider when dealing with “big data.” Annotated texts allow us to see the bigger picture without losing the details and nuances of its smaller, individual parts.

This suggested panel is a collaborative effort to explore the different ways tagged databases are used in Jewish Studies. We ask specifically how they contribute to our understanding of texts and corpora. The four presentations will refer to this question in different contexts. Together, they will utilize various methods—such as structural interpretation, hermeneutics, and terminology—to address the central question.

We hope that the exposure to this new way of study will motivate other scholars to consider our methodologies in their own fields and advance the study of bigger corpora, leading to new understandings and possible breakthroughs, that are out of reach when using only smaller-scale case studies and tools.

Sub Unit

• Digital Humanities (Wildcard Division)

Chair

• Ruthie Abeliovich, Tel Aviv University

Individual Presentations

• Annotating People in Hasidic Stories: Challenges and Opportunities - Sinai Rusinek, Haifa University; Gadi Sagiv, The Open University of Israel

• Manual and Automatic Annotation of Late Antique Poetry: Six Years Later - Ophir Münz-Manor, The Open University of Israel

• To Make a Short Story Long: The Preparation of Talmudic Stories for Distant Reading - Itay Marienberg, Ben Gurion University of the Negev; Avraham Yoskovich, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

• The Terminology of Rabbinic Midrash: Annotated Database as a Key to Understanding Midrashic Interpretation - YANIR MARMOR; Yaakov Kroizer, HUJI, TAU; Hallel Baitner, Tel Aviv University

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 10