Introducing Talmud & Tech’s ‘Related Posts’ Index

Nov 20, 2025

Over the past few years, this website has grown into a substantial archive of Talmudic analysis. With over 400 posts covering dozens of tractates, hundreds of sugyot, and thousands of pages of analysis, the sheer volume of content has created a new challenge: navigability.

When an archive reaches this size, it becomes difficult for even the author—let alone the reader—to remember every connection. A post written in 2023 about Berakhot might contain a thematic parallel to a post written in 2025 about Sanhedrin, but unless they share an explicit tag or link, that connection is often lost. Traditional categorization (by Tractate or broad topic) is useful, but it is rigid. It fails to capture the fluid, associative nature of Talmudic study, where a discussion on “Prayer” might unexpectedly veer into “Politics,” or a legal debate on “Damages” might hinge on a narrative about “Prophecy.”

To address this, I have created a new index: the Talmud & Tech ‘Related Posts’ Index.

This is not a commercial “more like this” algorithm designed to maximize engagement. Rather, it is a tool for semantic discovery. It is an attempt to map the conceptual interconnectedness of the blog’s content: a list of other pieces that “speak the same language,” regardless of when they were written or which tractate they cover.1

Link to the index (PDF, ~180 pp.):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wva3JRZPdNBhN7PI6bUkzg0YtRNltr18/view?usp=sharing

Uploaded here as well:

Brand Talmud And Techrelated Posts Index

2.72MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Outline

Intro
The Problem: The Limits of Manual Curation
The Solution: Semantic Similarity
Consolidating the Archive
What the Catalog Reveals
The “Theodicy” Web
The “Messianic” Nexus
How to Use This Tool

Appendix 1 - Technical Methodology

Data Extraction and Cleaning
Series Consolidation
TF-IDF Vectorization
Cosine Similarity
Output Generation

Appendix 2 - Excerpt of the index (pp. 27-33; Tractate Berakhot)

The Daily Moment of Divine Anger: Timing, Restraint, and Repentance (Berakhot 7a)
Prayer, Poetry, and Ethics
“Unusual In His Skin”: Talmudic Discourse on the Cushi and other Types of People With Notable Physical Appearances (Berakhot 58b and Moed Katan 16b)
Between Heaven and Earth: The Tale of Shmuel and the Orphans’ Money (Berakhot 18b)
“Even if all the seas would be ink”: Further Poetry of the Talmud (Shabbat 11a; Berakhot 17a; Moed Katan 25b)
Power, Pedagogy, and Internal Rabbinic Politics: The Deposition of Rabban Gamliel, the Appointment of R’ Elazar ben Azarya, and Eventual Reconciliation (Berakhot 27b-28a)
Abundance in Ancient Israel: Talmudic Accounts of Extraordinary Fruits and Families (Berakhot 44a)
From Animal Attacks to Biblical Miracles: Blessings at the Sites of Supernatural Rescues (Berakhot 54a)
Gratitude After Adversity: The Obligation of Thanksgiving for Seafarers, Desert Travelers, the Recovered, and the Freed, Rooted in Psalm 107 (Berakhot 54b)
Rituals for Favorable Dream Manifestation and Protection from the Evil Eye (Berakhot 55b)
Selected Dream Interpretations, Especially Those Relating to Illicit Sex (Berakhot 56a-57b)
Symbolism of Plants, Animals, Birds, and Nature in Talmudic Dream Interpretations: Over 40 Dream Elements and Their Meanings (Berakhot 56b-57b)
Sensory Delights and Echoes of the Divine: The Talmud on Pleasures, Omens, Health and Microcosms (Berakhot 57b)
From Babylon’s Ruins to Jewish Multitudes: Talmudic Blessings for Idolatry, Crowds, and Leadership (Berakhot 57b-58a)
Earthly and Divine Majesty: Encounters with Kings, Justice, and the Reflection of Heaven on Earth (Berakhot 58a)
Celestial Phenomena: Comets and Constellations in the Talmud (Mishnah Berakhot 9:2; Berakhot 58b-59a)
Demons, Direction, and Decorum: A Talmudic Approach to Hygiene and Outhouse Use (Berakhot 61b-62b)
The Four Sermons of the Mid-Second Century Sages in Yavne: On Hospitality (Xenia) and the Honor of Torah Sages (Berakhot 63b)
‘All Dreams Follow the Mouth’: Bar-Haddaya’s Fee-Driven Interpretations of the Dreams of Rava and Abaye (Berakhot 56a-b)
Hezekiah’s Illness and Isaiah’s Visit in Isaiah 38: A Clash of Piety and Prophecy (Berakhot 10a-b)
Talmudic Theodicy: Moses’ Requests, Divine Responses, and the Mystery of Divine Justice (Berakhot 7a-b)
“Menaḥem ben Ḥizkiyya is his name”: The Name of the Messiah and the Infant Potential Messiah in the Post-Destruction (Bavli Sanhedrin 98b; Yerushalmi Berakhot 2:4, #12)

The Problem: The Limits of Manual Curation

In the traditional method of organizing a blog, connections are manual. I might remember to link a new post to an old one. But manual curation has limits:

Memory: I simply cannot recall every relevant point I made three years ago.
Rigidity: A post about “King David” belongs in the “David” category. But if that post is actually about the psychology of repentance, it should also be linked to posts about “Sin” or “Teshuva,” even if David isn’t mentioned in them.

I wanted a system that could read the content of the essays—the actual arguments, vocabulary, and citations—and mathematically determine which posts are related.

The Solution: Semantic Similarity

The Recommender uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the full text of every post in the archive.

By converting every post into a mathematical representation (a vector), the system can measure the “distance” between any two posts.2 Two posts that use similar unique vocabulary—words like “redemption,” “exile,” “Messiah,” “Sanhedrin”—will be mathematically close to each other, even if they are separated by years of publication.

This allows for cross-tractate discovery. A post about the Sotah ritual (in Tractate Sotah) might be mathematically similar to a post about the High Priest (in Tractate Yoma) because they both discuss themes of “ritual purity,” “Temple procedure,” and “divine judgment,” even though the tractates are different.

Consolidating the Archive

My recent 7-part series on the Messianic Era technically counts as 7 posts, but conceptually, it is one large unit. If you are reading Part 3, a “dumb” recommender would suggest Part 2 and Part 4. This is unhelpful; you already know they are related.

The new system intelligently consolidates these series. It groups all parts of “The Messianic Era” into a single entry, aggregates their text into one “super-document,” and then finds external connections.

The result is the ‘Related Posts’ Index, a document that lists every unique topic on the blog and its top 3 semantic “partners.”

What the Catalog Reveals

The system successfully identified thematic clusters that I didn’t explicitly curated.

The “Theodicy” Web

An important theme in Talmudic aggadah is Theodicy: the problem of divine justice. The recommender created a web of connections linking:

Moses’ arguments with God (in Berakhot and Sotah).
The suffering of Job (in Bava Batra).
The death of Rabbi Akiva (in Menachot).
The destruction of the Temple (in Gittin).

These posts span the entire Talmud, yet the system recognized that they are all grappling with the same fundamental theological question.

The “Messianic” Nexus

The series on the Messianic Era (Sanhedrin) was correctly linked to posts about Hallel (Pesachim) and Resurrection (Ketubot). This highlights the theological consistency of the Talmudic worldview: the “End of Days” is a current that runs through discussions of prayer, land, and the afterlife.

How to Use This Tool

This index is a practical tool for study and research.

For the Scholar: It serves as a concordance of ideas. If you are researching a specific concept, the catalog provides a curated bibliography of relevant pieces.
For the Reader: It offers a “rabbit hole” for deep diving. If you enjoyed a post about Dreams, the catalog immediately points you to every other significant discussion of dream interpretation in the archive, allowing you to follow the thread wherever it leads.
For the Author: On a practical level, it points to places were I can likely link to other relevant posts.

Appendix 1 - Technical Methodology

For those interested in the mechanism behind the Recommender, this section outlines the technical stack and algorithmic approach.

Data Extraction and Cleaning

The process begins with the raw HTML of the 680+ posts (exported from Substack’s admin dashboard). A Python script uses BeautifulSoup to strip away HTML tags, scripts, and styling, leaving only the raw text.

Normalization: Text is converted to lowercase.
Stopword Removal: A custom “stopword” list was developed. In standard NLP, words like “the” and “and” are removed. For this specific corpus, I also removed generic domain terms like “Rabbi,” “Talmud,” “said,” “Gemara,” and “text.” This forces the algorithm to focus on specific content words (e.g., “redemption,” “purity,” “dream”) rather than the generic vocabulary of Rabbinic literature.

Series Consolidation

To avoid redundancy, the script identifies multi-part series using regex pattern matching on titles (e.g., detecting “Pt1”, “Part 2”).

Grouping: Posts sharing a base title (e.g., “The Messianic Era”) are grouped together.
Aggregation: The text of all parts is concatenated into a single string. This ensures the model analyzes the comprehensive topic of the series.

TF-IDF Vectorization

The core algorithm is TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency).

TF (Term Frequency): Measures how often a word appears in a document. (e.g., “Messiah” appears frequently in the Sanhedrin posts).
IDF (Inverse Document Frequency): Measures how rare a word is across the entire archive. Words that appear everywhere (like “Torah”) get a low score. Words that appear in only a few documents (like “Leviathan” or “Achan”) get a high score. This process converts every document into a high-dimensional vector of numbers, representing the “weight” of its unique vocabulary.

Cosine Similarity

To find related posts, the system calculates the Cosine Similarity between these vectors.

Imagine every document as an arrow pointing in a multi-dimensional space.
If two documents share many high-weight words (e.g., both discuss “dreams” and “interpretation”), their arrows point in almost the same direction.
The algorithm measures the cosine of the angle between them. A score of 1.0 means identical content; 0.0 means no shared vocabulary.

Output Generation

The script generates a Markdown catalog listing every unique Series/Topic. For each entry, it ranks the top 3 other entries with the highest similarity scores, filtering out the entry itself to prevent self-referencing.

This Markdown file was then converted to a docx file. A table of contents and numbering was added, and the file was then saved as a PDF.

Appendix 2 - Excerpt of the index (pp. 27-33; Tractate Berakhot)

The Daily Moment of Divine Anger: Timing, Restraint, and Repentance (Berakhot 7a)

11 Aug 2025

Talmudic Theodicy: Moses’ Requests, Divine Responses, and the Mystery of Divine Justice (Berakhot 7a-b) - Similarity: 0.15

Tannaitic Aphorisms (Avot 4:15-22) - Similarity: 0.14

Pt3 Prayer, Poetry, and Ethics: A Journey Through Seventeen Talmudic Prayers and Ethical Teachings (Berakhot 16b-17a; Eruvin 54a)

3-part series

Tannaitic Aphorisms (Avot 2:10-3:2) - Similarity: 0.23

Rabbinic Advice: Practical Guidance from the Talmud (Pesachim 112a-114a) - Similarity: 0.21

“Unusual In His Skin”: Talmudic Discourse on the Cushi and other Types of People With Notable Physical Appearances (Berakhot 58b and Moed Katan 16b)

17 May 2024

Anointing Priests and Kings: The Miraculous Anointing Oil (Horayot 11b-12a) - Similarity: 0.08

“Appropriate Names”: The Interplay of Aptronyms, Pseudonyms, and Epithets in the Talmud - Similarity: 0.08

Between Heaven and Earth: The Tale of Shmuel and the Orphans’ Money (Berakhot 18b)

23 May 2024

Heavenly Greetings: The Righteousness of a Bloodletter (Taanit 21b-22a) - Similarity: 0.19

From Admonishment to Excommunication: The Talmudic Laws of Ostracism (Moed Katan 16a-b) - Pt.3 - Similarity: 0.14

“Even if all the seas would be ink”: Further Poetry of the Talmud (Shabbat 11a; Berakhot 17a; Moed Katan 25b)

07 Feb 2024

“Preparing Her Mouth” and “Turning Her Back”: The Talmud on the “The Bad Wife” (Yevamot 63b) - Similarity: 0.15

‘All Dreams Follow the Mouth’: Bar-Haddaya’s Fee-Driven Interpretations of the Dreams of Rava and Abaye (Berakhot 56a-b) - Similarity: 0.13

Power, Pedagogy, and Internal Rabbinic Politics: The Deposition of Rabban Gamliel, the Appointment of R’ Elazar ben Azarya, and Eventual Reconciliation (Berakhot 27b-28a)

2-part series

Defending God, Biblical Monotheism, and Jewish Distinctiveness: Twelve Dialogues Between Sages and Challengers in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 38b-39a) - Similarity: 0.31

Sanctifying the Moon: Tales of Rabban Gamliel’s Ancestral Traditions, Dirt-Throwing, and a Message About the Enduring King David (Rosh Hashanah 25a) - Similarity: 0.29

Abundance in Ancient Israel: Talmudic Accounts of Extraordinary Fruits and Families (Berakhot 44a)

22 Jul 2024

The Greatness of Residing in Eretz Yisrael, and the Future Messianic Resurrection (Ketubot 111a-b) - Similarity: 0.16

Eretz Yisrael’s Miraculous Agricultural Fertility: Past, Present, and Future (Ketubot 111b-112a) - Similarity: 0.15

From Animal Attacks to Biblical Miracles: Blessings at the Sites of Supernatural Rescues (Berakhot 54a)

16 Aug 2024

The Confession, Punishment, and Atonement of Achan in Joshua 7 (Sanhedrin 43b-44b) - Similarity: 0.12

Earthly and Divine Majesty: Encounters with Kings, Justice, and the Reflection of Heaven on Earth (Berakhot 58a) - Similarity: 0.12

Gratitude After Adversity: The Obligation of Thanksgiving for Seafarers, Desert Travelers, the Recovered, and the Freed, Rooted in Psalm 107 (Berakhot 54b)

24 Jan 2025

Expressions of praise in the Book of Psalms and the Origin of the Hallel Prayer (Pesachim 117a) - Similarity: 0.14

Debating With the Temple’s Gates: The Dramatic Story of Solomon’s Temple Dedication, based on 1 Kings 8 and Psalms 24:7-10 (Shabbat 30a) - Similarity: 0.13

Rituals for Favorable Dream Manifestation and Protection from the Evil Eye (Berakhot 55b)

06 Feb 2025

Prayer, Poetry, and Ethics - Similarity: 0.17

Four Riddle-like Aggadic Statements and Their Interpretations By R’ Ezra, Grandson of R’ Eutolus (Menachot 53a-b) - Similarity: 0.16

Selected Dream Interpretations, Especially Those Relating to Illicit Sex (Berakhot 56a-57b)

2-part series

Symbolism of Plants, Animals, Birds, and Nature in Talmudic Dream Interpretations: Over 40 Dream Elements and Their Meanings (Berakhot 56b-57b) - Similarity: 0.26

‘All Dreams Follow the Mouth’: Bar-Haddaya’s Fee-Driven Interpretations of the Dreams of Rava and Abaye (Berakhot 56a-b) - Similarity: 0.24

Symbolism of Plants, Animals, Birds, and Nature in Talmudic Dream Interpretations: Over 40 Dream Elements and Their Meanings (Berakhot 56b-57b)

3-part series

‘All Dreams Follow the Mouth’: Bar-Haddaya’s Fee-Driven Interpretations of the Dreams of Rava and Abaye (Berakhot 56a-b) - Similarity: 0.23

The Messianic Era in the Talmud - Similarity: 0.20

Sensory Delights and Echoes of the Divine: The Talmud on Pleasures, Omens, Health and Microcosms (Berakhot 57b)

2-part series

Lives, Loves, and Hatreds: Psychological and Social Commentary on Human Behaviors, Group Dynamics, and Animal Traits (Pesachim 113b) - Similarity: 0.18

Symbolism of Plants, Animals, Birds, and Nature in Talmudic Dream Interpretations: Over 40 Dream Elements and Their Meanings (Berakhot 56b-57b) - Similarity: 0.14

From Babylon’s Ruins to Jewish Multitudes: Talmudic Blessings for Idolatry, Crowds, and Leadership (Berakhot 57b-58a)

2-part series

Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah and the Fiery Furnace in the Talmud: Aggadic Expansion of Daniel 3 (Sanhedrin 92b-93a) - Similarity: 0.23

Divine Beauty or Prohibited Gaze? The Talmud on Admiring Non-Jewish Women (Avodah Zarah 20a-b) - Similarity: 0.18

Earthly and Divine Majesty: Encounters with Kings, Justice, and the Reflection of Heaven on Earth (Berakhot 58a)

2-part series

‘A Non-Jew Has No Father’: The Halachic Status of Convert Brothers and Their Wives in the Context of Levirate Marriage and Sexual Prohibitions (Yevamot 97b-98a) - Similarity: 0.22

Rome’s Hands, Jacob’s Voice: A Talmudic Lament Over the Destruction (Gittin 57b-58a) - Similarity: 0.21

Celestial Phenomena: Comets and Constellations in the Talmud (Mishnah Berakhot 9:2; Berakhot 58b-59a)

2-part series

Book of Job in Talmudic Interpretation: Job’s Contested Righteousness and Satan’s Character (Bava Batra 15b-16b) - Similarity: 0.12

The Celestial Spheres According to Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (Laws of Foundations of the Torah 3:1-9) - Similarity: 0.12

Demons, Direction, and Decorum: A Talmudic Approach to Hygiene and Outhouse Use (Berakhot 61b-62b)

2-part series

From Sodomite Salt to Demonic Gutters: The Hidden Meanings Behind Talmudic Eating Practices (Chullin 105b-106a) - Similarity: 0.14

Perilous Pairs: More on the Dangers of Pairs, Demons, and Witchcraft (Pesachim 110a-b) - Similarity: 0.13

The Four Sermons of the Mid-Second Century Sages in Yavne: On Hospitality (Xenia) and the Honor of Torah Sages (Berakhot 63b)

2-part series

Related Post:

The Messianic Era in the Talmud - Similarity: 0.18

Talmudic Theodicy: Moses’ Requests, Divine Responses, and the Mystery of Divine Justice (Berakhot 7a-b) - Similarity: 0.17

‘All Dreams Follow the Mouth’: Bar-Haddaya’s Fee-Driven Interpretations of the Dreams of Rava and Abaye (Berakhot 56a-b)

2-part series

Symbolism of Plants, Animals, Birds, and Nature in Talmudic Dream Interpretations: Over 40 Dream Elements and Their Meanings (Berakhot 56b-57b) - Similarity: 0.23

Dinars, Disputes, and Dilutions: Rava’s Query and the Spark of a Scholarly Spat (Nedarim 55a) - Similarity: 0.20

Hezekiah’s Illness and Isaiah’s Visit in Isaiah 38: A Clash of Piety and Prophecy (Berakhot 10a-b)

15 Aug 2025

The Messianic Era in the Talmud - Similarity: 0.21

The Biblical King Hezekiah’s Six Controversial Actions: Three Approved, Three Not (Mishnah Pesachim 4:9) - Similarity: 0.20

Talmudic Theodicy: Moses’ Requests, Divine Responses, and the Mystery of Divine Justice (Berakhot 7a-b)

2-part series

Hallel: Scope, Significance, and Related Aggadic Teachings (Pesachim 118a-b) - Similarity: 0.28

‘When a King Sins’: Sin, Reward, and Responsibility in Talmudic Theology (Horayot 10a-b) - Similarity: 0.27

“Menaḥem ben Ḥizkiyya is his name”: The Name of the Messiah and the Infant Potential Messiah in the Post-Destruction (Bavli Sanhedrin 98b; Yerushalmi Berakhot 2:4, #12)

22 May 2024

Related Post:

The Messianic Era in the Talmud - Similarity: 0.42

“Appropriate Names”: The Interplay of Aptronyms, Pseudonyms, and Epithets in the Talmud - Similarity: 0.14

Rome’s Hands, Jacob’s Voice: A Talmudic Lament Over the Destruction (Gittin 57b-58a) - Similarity: 0.13

Compare my manually curated indices:

Note: This project was developed using Google Antigravity, Google’s new AI coding IDE (a fork of VS Code, and similar to Cursor), which launched in the last few days.

The experience was excellent. Its automatic “tasks” list feature is particularly intriguing. Screenshot:

Compare the recent general review of this new IDE by Ethan Mollick, “Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3”, section “Coding tools that aren’t just coding tools“ and on (Nov 18, 2025).

See later in this piece for a more detailed technical breakdown.

Introducing Talmud & Tech’s ‘Related Posts’ Index

Outline

The Problem: The Limits of Manual Curation

The Solution: Semantic Similarity

Consolidating the Archive

What the Catalog Reveals

The “Theodicy” Web

The “Messianic” Nexus

How to Use This Tool

Appendix 1 - Technical Methodology

Data Extraction and Cleaning

Series Consolidation

TF-IDF Vectorization

Cosine Similarity

Output Generation

Appendix 2 - Excerpt of the index (pp. 27-33; Tractate Berakhot)

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