eLijah-Lab is a digital humanities laboratory at The Department of Jewish History and Bible Studies in the University of Haifa. The laboratory initiates and conducts various Crowdsourcing and citizen science projects to integrate the wisdom of the masses in the fields of Jewish history, Jewish thought and Bible.

The laboratory's initiatives costitute an innovative connection between academic research and the public, heritage institutions, culture and education. Through the projects, the public is called upon to assist in various research and collection missions, and to be exposed to the forefront of knowledge and research in the field.

The projects enable the public to share historic documents and treasures, as well as active participation in analysis and research. The wisdom of the masses will allow for the accumulation of more information in a shorter time while maintaining a public commitment to preserving the critical values ​​inherent in our projects, and preparing the way to the next era of digital humanities.

The projects facilitate access to information and research methods in the fields of history, Jewish thought, and the Bible Studies to the general public. All this is part of a new ethos of partnership that is possible in the 21st century city square – the Internet.

eLijah-Lab was founded thanks to the support of the "Heichal Eliyahu" Association.

The Elijah-Lab serves as platform for digital research projects based on crowdsourcing and citizen science. The laboratory's first projects are:

1. “Scribes of the Cairo Genizah” – aimed at transcribing texts from the Cairo Genizah.
2. “Tikkoun Sofrim” – aimed at textual accessibility of Hebrew manuscripts through the integration of machine learning based automatic reading and crowdsourcing.
3. “Digital Atlas of Judaism in Late Antiquity” – aimed at spatial and chronological representation of texts and archeological findings.
4. “Polish Jewry between the Two World Wars” – aimed at collecting and studying documents and ephemera representing the life of Polish Jewry at its’ dawn.

In each project, E-lab is committed to three fold enterprise, including:

• Digital Platform: Providing a website through which the public can participate in research.

– Archival / research goal: fulfilling asubstantial scholarly or archival need through public participation.

– Public Engagement: Collaborations with educational and heritage institutions in order to bring the project into the public arena.

The eLijah-Lab portal, which includes various crowdsourcing and citizen science projects, allows curios and devoted people to participate in the wonderful process of historical digitization, documentation, preservation and sharing knowledge.