About the Lab

The Elijah Lab is the University of Haifa’s digital humanities hub, operating within the Department of Jewish History, Jewish Thought, and Bible. The Lab conducts research, develops digital tools, and works to make knowledge in the field of Jewish Studies more accessible through the integration of advanced technologies.

The Elijah Lab leads innovative projects that combine data processing, historical mapping, knowledge modeling, and the digital preservation of manuscripts, documents, and historical sources. We develop and apply artificial intelligence tools, machine learning technologies, and network analysis methods to support research in the humanities.

The Lab also serves as an incubator for the application of digital humanities tools and methodologies beyond Jewish Studies, extending to other areas of the humanities and to related fields such as education, law, and the social sciences.

The Elijah Lab welcomes collaborations with researchers, students, and cultural and heritage organizations. We provide consultation and support throughout all stages of digital humanities research – from developing an initial idea, preparing research proposals and grant applications, to developing digital tools, creating databases, and making knowledge accessible to the wider public.

Call for Proposals: Digital Tools for Judeo-Arabic Research

Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, in collaboration with the Elijah Lab, invites proposals for the development and application of digital tools for the study of Judeo-Arabic
Key areas of interest include: developing computational methodologies for natural language processing (NLP), creating digital repositories, preserving historical texts, and making them accessible to the research community
Application:Please submit a CV and proposal by September 15.

Contact Us
Congratulations to Dr. Hadar Miller on the approval of his doctoral dissertation and the conferral of his PhD!

Dr. Miller’s research developed the ACT model, an advanced computational method for identifying intertextual connections in rabbinic literature. The model combines text alignment, graph-based semantic representations, and algorithmic optimization to detect complex patterns of similarity.
ACT reveals textual parallels that have remained undetected through manual research and provides an innovative, interdisciplinary framework for digital humanities research, with broad applications ranging from rabbinic studies to the social sciences.

The Strashun Library Project: Updates from Vilnius

In February 2026, Prof. Moshe Lavee and Dr. Eliezer Baumgarten conducted research in Vilnius as part of the Strashun Library Project, uncovering extensive historical materials relating to the library’s activities and the composition of its collection.

These findings make it possible to reconstruct the collection and gain new insights into historical reading practices, while also advancing the digitization and accessibility of the materials through computational tools. The project opens new avenues for research into Jewish culture in Vilnius on the eve of the Holocaust.

Click here to view the projects.