From tablet to tablet, from scroll to scroll…

… thus wrote Amos and Fania Oz in their essay about the Jewish textual tradition. The references are to the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, the Torah scroll containing the five books of Moses and the connection with modern computer language. Yet the ‘connection’ is not simply a play on words. It also reflects important links, which with the digital access of cultural heritage can signify a new era. The heritage of Judaism (texts, objects, sound and video recordings) are becoming digitally accessible across the world, involving a variety of purposes and methods. Some of these correspond to scholarly and museological norms, but there are also different applications. The fast reception of digital and internet technology has been facilitated by the methodology of  browsing the internet and acquiring knowledge being similar to the traditional practice of learning Jewish texts. The Talmud, the foundation stone of Jewish tradition, like the internet, is a multi-dimensional text, not for reading in a linear manner, in which hyperlinks connect with bodies of texts and contents the reader can freely follow in accordance with individual interests. Traditionally this is facilitated by the text’s specific columns, in a layout surrounding the main text. This ‘linked open data’ is made possible with the methodology of the ‘digital humanities’, which freely connects and jointly interprets the contents in different heritage institutes, and offers along with the displayed objects an interpretive experience following a method similar to the study of the Talmud. Perhaps it is also thanks to Judaism’s strong textual tradition that while the digitization and online publication of Hebrew texts were among the first to take place, in the case of Judaica or objects of Jewish culture held in museums a breakthrough only came in recent years. We encounter the same delay in that the museum collection and scholarly analysis of the material part of Jewish heritage began at the end of the 19th century, long after its texts and books. It was after the establishment of the first Jewish museums – Vienna (1895), Frankfurt and Hamburg (1898), Prague (1906), Budapest (1909), etc. – that the infrastructure of scholarly fields relating to their interpretation was formed.  The destruction caused by the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel opened up a new dimension in concepts relating to Jewish heritage. Digitization and internet publication are important for every group attaching great importance to its culture. The selection of contents to be digitized and the method of publication strongly indicate the identity of the group, its political and cultural ambitions. In the case of Diaspora cultures,  there is also the possibility for at least virtually connecting the community and cultural heritage dispersed across the world but belonging to the same culture.