Why I Built NACHMAN

I believe that truth is worth searching for. Not a slogan that sounds good, and not a sentence quoted only because everyone quotes it, but what is really written, and what can be checked.

It is easy to replace what happened with the story we tell ourselves. Something happens, and right away we give it a meaning. Sometimes that meaning is right, and sometimes it is only one possibility. The same thing happens with sources: it is easy to read a sentence, feel that we understood, and carry on with our own understanding as if it were what was said. So I want to stop and ask: what is written there, and what did I add?

And I am looking for learning that lives inside life. Not a beautiful idea that is quickly forgotten, but something you can come back to, check, and ask what it says to me today.

In my eyes, the teachings of Rabbi Nachman are not raw material. They are not a collection of sentences that can be cut out and pasted onto any situation. That is why the order on the site is fixed. First we check what is said in the source. Then we explain. And only then do we ask what it means for life today.

In practice this means a few simple things. Every passage on the site is shown from a documented edition, and is not retyped. Next to every passage it says which book it is from and exactly where, and it has a permanent address, so you can come back to it and check. A verified quotation is checked against the library before it is shown, and if the wording does not match, it is not shown.

The sources page lists, for each book, the edition it was taken from and what the library knows about who wrote it. And a sentence you heard or read without an address can be pasted into the page Where is this from?, and the site searches the books for its source.

This is one of the reasons I built NACHMAN: I want every important quotation on the site to be something you can check.

These are some of the places where the things I am looking for meet the books. The line above each passage is mine, and it only says what subject the passage deals with. What the passage says is written in it, in the original Hebrew, and the link leads to the full passage.

NACHMAN does not come to replace books, rabbis or learning. It tries to open a gate to the sources themselves, and to give every person simple, clean access to them.

So the site tries to do two things. The first is to help you understand the source itself: what is said, where, and in what context. The second is to ask how the words meet life in practice. Not with a slogan, but with a simple question: what does this say to me today, and what do I do with it?

You can search for a topic, read a whole chapter in the library, or ask a question and receive an answer that relies on passages from the sources, with the passages themselves shown beside it. Someone who knows the books can use the site to return to a place they remembered, by the name of the book and the number. Someone who has never opened a book can start from a question, and make their way from it to the text.

There are several voices on the site, and I want it always to be clear who is speaking:

• The words of Rabbi Nachman: the text of the books attributed to him, such as Likutei Moharan, is shown as written, with the book and the place it is taken from.
• The words of Rabbi Nathan: his books, such as Chayei Moharan, are presented as his books, and not as the words of Rabbi Nachman.
• Books in the library that have no verified attribution of authorship, such as Sichot HaRan and Shivchei HaRan, are cited by the name of the book only, without attributing them to anyone.
• Other Jewish sources, when they appear, are marked by their names.
• My own interpretation and belief are written in my own voice: "I believe", "in my eyes". I do not put them in Rabbi Nachman's mouth.

The explanation the system writes in answer to a question is not the language of the source either. It is a way to reach the text, not a substitute for reading it.