Upload Texts

Thank you for contributing a text to On1Foot! The site is designed to be a collaborative effort in Jewish social justice education and your contributions are greatly appreciated.

This guide aims to help you navigate the two main elements of uploading texts to the site. If you have further questions, please contact us.

1. Selecting what texts to upload
2. Understanding the on-line uploader

Selecting What Texts to Upload

Functionality
What is a text?
What is a Jewish text?

Functionality

On1Foot is designed to facilitate compelling, informative and engaging text study in the area of Jewish social justice. To that end, a text must be something that can be studied by a group of people, most often along with other texts. Given this criterion, texts should be bite-sized—big enough to chew on, but small enough to digest all at once.

What is a text?

A text is any thought published by a reputable source. It can be as short as a sentence or as long as several paragraphs. The citation of the source must include enough information that users could find the text in a library or on-line in its original published format. Texts from all time periods, from all areas of social justice and from all Jewish backgrounds and perspectives are encouraged.

What is a Jewish text?

For the purposes of On1Foot, a Jewish text is either written by a Jew (from Beruria to Ralph Lemkin, Rashi to Emma Goldman) or written about Jewish social justice by an outside source—academic, journalistic, etc. Texts on the site will likely answer one or more of the following questions:

• Is there a Jewish way to be involved with social justice (as there is a Jewish way to pray, for example)?
• What has been the role of Jews in social justice efforts throughout history and in contemporary times?
• What are the values that Judaism espouses? How might we put those values into practice in today’s global community?
• How, as Jews, are we meant to respond to the vast injustices plaguing today’s world?
• When the amount of need is so great, how, as Jews, might we prioritize our social activism and create the most change?
• How does Jewish history, law, thought and custom come to bear on how we see ourselves, as Jews, doing the work of social justice?

Understanding the On-line Uploader

Citation (in English)

This field allows you to search the site to make sure that the text you want to upload does not already appear on the site. Please begin typing the standardized citation of your text (e.g., Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 2a). If your text already appears on the site, it will appear in the drop-down menu. If this is the case, please use the Comments box on the text page to add your own commentary and discussion questions. If your text is not in the site already, please upload it.

This field should include the bibliographic citation for the text in English, with some transliteration. We have standardized the citation format for this site as follows:

Citation (in Original language)

In cases where the original language of the text is not English, this section allows you to include the citation in the language of the text. The standardization is similar to above, with common conventions for Hebrew texts used here as well. Below are a few examples:

In cases where the original language is neither English nor Hebrew, we ask you to input as much bibliographic information as you can.

Tagging

In order for texts to appear in a variety of searches, each text is tagged in a number of ways. Tagging is like putting labels on the texts, or organizing them into sections. The goal is for texts to be clearly connected to the relevant categories and easy to find. We have developed four main tagging areas, each one a likely entry point for a user to search for a text.

Time Period – This section identifies the time period in which the text was written. We have named five periods in Jewish history. There are certainly many ways to think about Jewish history and the development of Jewish thought. The time periods we have chosen are purposefully broad and attempt to reflect general trends in Jewish thinking. Further, the time period tags prioritize the goal of increasing accessibility to Jewish texts over academic accuracy.

Source Type – Jewish thought appears in many kinds of texts from narrative prose to legal discourse, from Chassidic writings to liturgical poetry. In order to increase accessibility to the myriad of texts in the site, we have identified six types of texts. Unlike Time Period, however, texts can often be more than one type at the same time. For example, a poem might also be commentary, or Rashi, a commentator, might also be naming a halachah (Jewish law). For this reason, each text can be tagged with multiple Source Type tags. Simply hold down the Control key while clicking.

Categories – Categories are designed to be a list of major topics in social justice.  Each text should be tagged with the categories for which the text offers insight.  Hold down the Control key to tag your text with as many categories as make sense for your text. If you think a category is missing from the list, please email info@on1foot.org.

Keywords - Keywords are an open and continually expanding list of search words. Use this space to type any words or phrases that you think a user might use to search for texts. You do not need to repeat any words from the Categories section, but can use this area to make searching and finding the right texts easier.

Original text reads…

This designation tells the database whether the text reads from left-to-right or from right-to-left. Please ensure that the selection is correct.

Original text

This text box is meant to contain the text you are uploading, in its original language. Please be sure there are no typographical or other transcription errors. Please use 'ה to indicate the 4-letter name of God.

Translation

In cases where the original language of the text is not English, please use this box to include a translation of the text. We ask that you use a published translation where possible, and that if there are a number of translations to choose from, that you select the translation with the most contemporary language. Please include a credit to the published translation by including the name of the translation in square brackets following a hard return at the end of the translation.

Please edit translations so that they use gender-neutral language and translate the 4-letter name of God as “Adonai.” If you use a published translation and edit it for gender neutrality, please credit it as “Name of translation, edited for gender neutrality.”

Example:
Isaiah 3:13-15
Adonai stands up to plead a cause, rises to champion peoples. Adonai will bring this charge against the elders and princes of his people: "It is you who have ravaged the vineyard; that which was robbed from the poor is in your houses. How dare you crush My people and grind the faces of the poor?" says Adonai, God of hosts.
[JPS translation, edited for gender neutrality]

Discussion Questions
Discussions questions should be designed to help learners engage with the text in new and surprising ways. In general, text questions are either about comprehension, analysis or application. We ask that you create questions that focus more on analysis and application, particularly questions that help the text add depth to Jewish social justice discourse. Please include a maximum of five questions, and please enumerate your questions with a period and two spaces following the numeral.

Example:

1. What principle does this text suggest be applied to food aid?

Texts that quote or comment directly on this text

If the text you are uploading quotes or mentions another text, this feature allows the quoted text to be cross-referenced on the site. The database will not be able to detect quoted texts, so they need to linked manually. You can only link to a text that already exists in the system.

As you start typing in the window, texts with that content will pop-up (much like the Google search auto-complete feature) and then you can select the correct text. If for example, your text references a Talmudic passage in Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 8a, begin entering Yoma or 8a and the system will automatically offer texts with those words in the citation.  You can link the text you are uploading to as many already existing texts as is appropriate.

If the quoted text is not already in the system but should be, please add it, and link the texts afterwards.

Once you have linked your new text to the already existing text (and saved your upload), please go into the quoted text page and link to your new text. This will ensure symmetry of cross-referenced texts.

Upload Texts