Eastern European Hasidism, with its roots in the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov (1700–1760), emerged as a significant social and spiritual force in Jewish society during the mid-18th century, exerting profound influence over the past three centuries. At the heart of Hasidic culture lies a rich tapestry of tales, orally transmitted, meticulously documented, and widely shared. Unlike scholarly discourses rooted in traditional Jewish education, such as Halakhic debates, philosophical inquiry, or Kabbalistic study, Hasidic narratives serve as a populist form of expression, reflecting the inclusive ethos of the movement, which resonated with diverse audiences.
This project will take a meticulously manually curated corpus and use it to evaluate and further train NLP and text analytic tools, in order to automate processes of knowledge extraction and apply them to a larger corpus. This expansion not only facilitates the exploration of innovative research methodologies but also enables an examination of the interplay between human annotation and machine comprehension in tasks related to uncovering themes and motifs within Hebrew Hasidic literature.