Revolutionary Computer Can Decipher Ancient Hebrew Texts in Seconds

“Hasten to the Shoko,” urged the computer. “The mouth asked to smoke,” it mused another time. Then it declared, “Jesus God to rejoice.” The cryptic phrases brought both smiles and satisfaction to the managers of the digital humanities laboratory at the University of Haifa. One is a Talmud and Midrash teacher and the other a professor of information systems.

The platform, called Kraken, is taking its tentative first steps in attempting to decipher ancient Hebrew. The hope is that in the not-too-distant future, after completing its studies, Kraken will be able to read any Hebrew text, even if the manuscript is distorted, illegible or hard to decipher. It’s part of a discipline called digital humanities, which uses advanced technology to enhance studies in history, the Bible and literature.

.

skip – Haaretz Weekly Ep. 56

Like children encountering Hebrew religious texts in elementary school for the first time, Kraken also needs practice to become familiar with the material. The “shoko” was supposed to be “shoket” – trough. The mouth wanted to “deal with the Torah,” not to smoke, while Jesus, heaven forbid, has nothing to do with the third phrase, which was originally “the Lord will again rejoice.”

Moshe Lavee, a Military Intelligence veteran, a senior lecturer in Talmud and Midrash in the university’s department of Jewish history in the University of Haifa. He is the director and founder of eLijah-Lab, Kraken’s home and one of the two researchers heading the lab. This week he spoke with contagious enthusiasm about the digital revolution, which is destined to save several research fields from oblivion. He uttered expressions that appear light years away from his “antiquated” research areas: “deep learning,” “remote viewing,” computer vision,” “data mining” and “artificial neural networks.”

On a monitor he showed a scanned section from Midrash Tanhuma, three collections of Pentateuch aggadot (homilies) from the end of the ancient history. The script is difficult to read, but the computer doesn’t give up. Kraken – developed by Prof. Daniel Stoekel Ben-Ezra of Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris – succeeds in reading it, and later presents it to the researcher as a simple text file.

Moshe Lavee (right) with a visitor at eLijah-Lab.Amir Levy

This opens new research possibilities that ignite the imagination, first and foremost searching and analyzing information in large scopes and kinds of texts that until now even the most skilled researcher couldn’t carry out alone.

“Our vision is to make all the Hebraic scripts accessible,” says Lavee. “We’ll turn Jewish and Hebraic legacy into texts accessible to computer search and study and save a huge treasure trove of knowledge and Jewish traditions.”