General Search Help

You can search any word or phrase that appears on the Classic Vilna Page or the Translation/Elucidation Pages of the Schottenstein Edition of the Talmud, including the footnotes.

The search system needs to build a search index of all the content on your device.  The first time you use the search, it may take a long time for all the content to be indexed. Please be patient.  You can continue working/reading/learning while the search index is processing.  We advise that you allow the process to complete first before continuing. The process of indexing your content can slow down your device while it is building this very powerful search database. In addition, any time you download a new volume or update a volume – the search index will need to add or update the search index. 

The Search Box

English Word Search: Tap in the search box and your keyboard should appear on your device.  Key in a word or several words that you would like to search for and then tap on the “Search” button. Your Search results will appear in a list below. Tap on any of the search results and the app will open that selection.  If you searched for an English phrase – the words that you searched for will be highlighted on the resulting page and the app will attempt to scroll the content to the location of the match.

Hebrew Word Search

For Hebrew word searches, you will need to activate your Hebrew Keyboard on your device. Go to Settings > General > Keyboards and tap “Add New Keyboard” and select Hebrew from the list.   Once the Hebrew keyboard is activated, you can switch between the English Keyboard and Hebrew Keyboard by selecting the Globe Icon next to the space bar.  Activate the Hebrew keyboard and key in the Hebrew word or words you would like to search for. When complete, tap the “חיפוש” button.  Your search results will appear in a list below.  When you tap on one of the search results, the app will open that selection and highlight the section of commentary or annotation on the page. At this time, the App will not highlight the specific Hebrew word on the Vilna PDF page.

Buttons:  Translation, Vilna and Options

Translation: Click here to indicate a search of the Translation/Elucidation Pages.  Since the Translation/Elucidation contains both Hebrew and English, you can enter any Hebrew or English words in the search box. You can also perform a search of a combination of Hebrew and English words.

Vilna : Tap the Vilna button to change the search to the Hebrew only Vilna pages to search anything printed on the Vilna pages including the commentaries and annotations.

Note:  When tapping on the search icon while viewing the Translation page,  the Translation button will be selected by default.  When tapping on the search while viewing the Vilna page, the Vilna button will be selected.

Options: Tap on options for additional filters, settings that can refine your search. See description of the options below.

You can refine your search by changing options on the options screen or by changing the text in the search box and tapping on the Search/חיפוש button.

Search Tips/Notes

• Searching for fewer words or fewer characters will frequently give you more and better matches. 
• There are many variations on how to spell Hebrew words and there are variations in how people transliterate Hebrew into English. So using fewer words or doing a prefix search (see below) will get better results many times.
• On the Translation/Elucidation pages, all Hebrew words that were abbreviated or shortened on the Vilna page are spelled out completely.  Adjust your searches accordingly.
• Please note: The text of the Hebrew on the translation pages has Nikkud – vowelization  in the Schottenstein Edition of The Talmud and the vowel points need to be removed from the search index so that a search of just the Hebrew letters will get a match on the Hebrew letters.  As a result, the interspersed Hebrew/English in the search results will not have Nikkud – this is by design.

Search Options

SEARCH FOR

• All These Words:  Will match any document that has all of the words entered into the search box – anywhere  in the document – regardless  of the order  or if there are other words in between. i.e.  Searching for “Obligation Shema”  will match “There is a Biblical Obligation to recite the Shema”
• This Exact Word or Phrase:  Will match any document that has those exact words in that exact sequence without any other words in between them.  i.e.  “Obligation to recite”  will match  There is a Biblical Obligation to recite the Shema”  - “Obligation recite” will not match that sentence. Use this option when you a search for a particular expression or sequence of words
• Any of these words: Will find any document that has ANY of these words - A or B. This Is useful when you are not sure of a spelling of a word

SEARCH RANGE

Use these options to narrow down which documents you want to search, including this whole volume or any volume in your library.

FILTERS

Use filters to narrow down your search to a specific type of Content or Commentary on either the Translation/Elucidation Pages of the Classic Vilna Page.

ELUCIDATION PAGE

These are the Translation and Elucidation pages that contain the original punctuated and vowelized Hebrew and the Notes. You can Search these pages in either English or Hebrew if you would like.  Use these filter to specify if you want to search the Talmud Translation and or the Scholarly Notes.

VILNA PAGE

You can search anything printed on the Vilna Page.  This includes Rashi, Tosafos and all other commentaries and Annotations on the page. The search engine includes all the content that you see before you on the Vilna pages. This filter Section lets you specify exactly which section or Commentaries you would like to search. You can specify where a word or phrase appears in the Gemara or specifically where it appears in Rashi or Tosafos.

Select everything to specify everything on the printed page. Or select one or multiple specific commentaries that you would like to research.

Please note: Not all of these commentaries and annotations appear in every Tractate. They are included here because they are needed for the Tractates that do include them.

Prefix Search

If you want to match a word that has multiple spellings, conjugations or suffixes, you can do a prefix wildcard search by using an asterisk.  I.e. searching for “oblig*”  will match “obligation”, “Obligatory” or “obligated” the same is true in Hebrew.  Searching for “bib* oblig*” will match “Biblically Obligated” or “Biblical Obligation” etc.

NEAR Searches

When you search for multiple words, the search will return any document that has those words anywhere in the document, no matter how far apart they are. If you want to refine your search to show just the places which are within a certain quantity of words from each other, you can use the NEAR command.  Searching for “Biblical NEAR/2 Obligated” will only return places where the two words have no more than 2 words between them. This will match: “Biblical is not obligated”

Combined Prefix and NEAR search

You can combine prefix and NEAR searches together.  For example, you could search for “Bib* NEAR/3 Oblig*”  and this will match any of the following:  “Biblical Obligation”, “..Obligation since even itsBiblical”, “Obligation is likewise Biblical”