ComputerRabbis Offline Torah Drive

A complete, fully offline Torah platform that runs from a USB drive or SD card with no installation and no internet — ever. Copy one folder onto removable storage and it works on any Windows or Mac computer.

It contains:

• 📚 A seforim library — ~7,000 seforim (Tanach, Shas, Rambam, Shulchan Aruch, Mishnah Berurah, midrash, mussar, chassidus, shu"t and more), readable two ways:
  • a no-install browser reader (Library-Web/) — opens like a web page, no program to run. Includes full-text search across the entire library, type-a-reference jump-to (e.g. a masechta + daf, or a perek), a "Today's Learning" Daf Yomi shortcut, multi-tab research with split view, highlighting, and an embedded dictionary lookup on any selected word;
  • the optional Otzaria app (Otzaria-Windows/) for the same library as a native desktop app.
• 🕰️ A Jewish Calendar & Zmanim Toolkit (Zmanim/) — zmanim for any location, Hebrew↔civil date conversion, holidays for any year, a yahrzeit calculator, printable luchos, and .ics calendar export — powered by @hebcal/core and KosherZmanim, entirely offline and valid in perpetuity.
• 📖 Offline dictionaries (Library-Web/dictionaries.html) — unified lookup across Jastrow (Talmudic Aramaic & Hebrew), BDB (Biblical Hebrew & Aramaic), and the Klein etymological dictionary — ~34,000 entries, searchable with or without nikud.
• A branded START-HERE page and a Sources & Dates page documenting exactly what's inside and when it was captured.

How this repo is organized

Git holds code, not gigabytes. The multi-GB texts are downloaded from upstream and built locally, so the repo stays small and the platform stays fully reproducible.

Path	In git?	What it is
usb-root/START-HERE.html, SOURCES-AND-DATES.html	✅	Landing + provenance pages
usb-root/Zmanim/	✅	Calendar/zmanim toolkit + engines + city list
usb-root/Library-Web/ (index.html, reader.js, search-embed.js, dict-embed.js, fonts/)	✅	Browser reader UI
usb-root/licenses/	✅	Third-party license texts
build/, sources.json	✅	Build scripts + machine-readable provenance
usb-root/Library/, usb-root/Library-Web/books/, usb-root/Library-Web/search/, usb-root/Otzaria-Windows/	❌ (gitignored)	The big data — fetched/built

Building a complete drive

git clone <this-repo>
cd offline-torah-drive
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File build\fetch_sources.ps1

This downloads the Otzaria app + library, builds the browser-reader data, pulls the curated Sefaria English translations (Shas/Rambam/Rashi/Chumash/etc. — thousands of files, the slowest step), fetches the English-translated Siddur Sefard, and builds the Mikraos Gedolot (Chumash with Rashi/Rashbam/Ibn Ezra/Sforno/Or HaChaim/Kli Yakar/Malbim aligned per-pasuk), all into usb-root\. Two more one-time build steps produce data that's also gitignored (regenerate after adding/changing books):

python build\lexicon_build.py   # dictionaries (Jastrow/BDB/Klein) -> Library-Web/dictionaries/
python build\search_build.py    # full-text search index -> Library-Web/search/ (run last; can take ~an hour)

A third step, only needed when picking up a newer @hebcal/core/@hebcal/learning release, rebuilds the Hebcal bundle (requires Node.js — this is the only build step that does):

cd build\hebcal-bundle
npm install
npm run build   # -> Zmanim/hebcal.bundle.min.js (Daf/Rambam/Mishna Yomi, holidays, molad, etc.)

Then copy the contents of usb-root\ to the root of a USB drive (exFAT; 32 GB recommended).

Distributing to end users

Because the assembled drive is ~8 GB, it exceeds GitHub's per-release limits, so the ready-to-copy folder is not distributed through GitHub. Options for handing it to users:

1. Self-build — they clone + run fetch_sources.ps1 (technical users only).
2. Hosted download — publish a pre-assembled .zip on ComputerRabbis infrastructure (Cloudflare R2 / the ComputerRabbis server / archive.org) and link it from computerrabbis.com.
3. Physical drives — the primary channel: hand out preloaded USB sticks.

Each release publishes a checksums.txt (SHA-256 of every file) so recipients can verify authenticity.

Provenance & updates

See sources.json and usb-root/SOURCES-AND-DATES.html for exact versions and snapshot dates. The calculations never expire; only the text snapshot ages. Publish a new edition periodically to refresh the texts.

Licenses

Platform code by ComputerRabbis. Third-party components retain their own licenses (Otzaria: Unlicense; KosherZmanim: LGPL-3.0; @hebcal/core: GPL-2.0; @hebcal/learning: BSD-2-Clause; texts: public-domain / CC-BY / CC-BY-SA / CC-BY-NC per work). Full texts in usb-root/licenses/.

Independent project — not affiliated with or endorsed by Sefaria, Dicta, Hebcal, or the Otzaria project.