AMBITIOUS NAME:
Mercava platform claims it’s the future of Jewish education
Daf Yomi program providing free Talmud access is being piloted in 100 schools; is it revolutionary, or over-hyped?
By Julie Wiener January 25, 2014, 10:13 pm (Times of Israel)
NEW YORK (JTA) — An Israel-based nonprofit boasts staff and board members from brand-name companies like Facebook and Disney. Its splashy fundraising video promises a customizable online platform for Jewish learning with a comprehensive digital library of Judaic texts featuring translations, links to related sources, maps and videos.
But is Mercava the future of Jewish education or mere vaporware, the tech term for overly hyped software that never fully materializes?
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The promotional video is cool, but I thought it could have more specifics. But maybe I don't think like a startup investor. In any case the agenda of the project is, as this article notes, also nothing if not ambitious:
Mercava is hardly the first piece of Jewish educational technology, but it may be the most ambitious. A start-up called Sefaria has begun enlisting volunteers to help put the entire Jewish canon online. The publisher Behrman House makes its textbooks available in digital form. And Israel’s Center for Education Technology has helped develop interactive textbooks for use in Jewish day schools.
But none matches Mercava in the sheer breadth of features, services, texts and other media it plans to make available in one central hub. The scale of the site’s ambitions is evident in its marketing rhetoric, which touts the project as “the biggest thing to happen to Talmud since Talmud.”
[CEO and co-founder Yehuda] Moshe said Mercava has been in development for nearly five years and that most of the “underlying work” is done. A basic version of its Daf Yomi program providing free access to the Talmud already is available and has been piloted in almost 100 schools, mostly in Australia and England, he says.
Additional products will begin rolling out in July with the release of 1,000 interactive books in Hebrew and English. A lesson builder tool for teachers will be released soon after.
It is not clear whether Mercava will be open source, but Moshe emphasized that most of its contents will be offered for free.
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Incidentally, this isn't the first time the Hebrew word "Merkavah" has been used as a
product title. That one was pretty ambitious too. It will be interesting to follow what happens with the Mercava platform.