כלים · MERKAZ LAB
Tools for doing Jewish learning—not just reading about it.
The Merkaz Lab gathers practical interactives, text workbenches, source-sheet tools, and educator experiments in one place.
Each tool has its own status. A prototype is not presented as a finished release, and a working feature is not treated as evidence of demand.
Read → Work → Teach → Share
Technology belongs here when it helps people see structure, compare sources, ask better questions, make useful learning objects, and return to human conversation.
Current tool portfolio
Status language is part of the product: public, pilot, supervised beta, prototype, or planned.
PUBLIC INTERACTIVE
Choose Your Siddur
Compare siddur options by community, practice, usability, and learning needs. This is the clearest existing example of a focused Merkaz tool solving a concrete learner problem.
PILOT / ROUTE UNDER REVIEW
Merkaz TextLab
A Sefaria-connected biblical text workbench for annotation, outlining, translation, collaboration, import, and publishing. The plugin is installed, but the public entry route, onboarding, permissions, and product validation still require review.
PILOT / ROUTE UNDER REVIEW
Daf Studio
An adaptive, bilingual, Vilna-inspired source-sheet environment with visual arrangement, private storage, revision history, and membership-aware sharing. It remains a product track requiring guided testing before broad invitation.
SEPARATE SUPERVISED-BETA TRACK
Torah Library for Google Docs
A preview-first Google Docs add-on for finding, comparing, inserting, and linking Jewish sources. Automated checks are strong, but the current candidate still needs live installed-add-on testing, privacy-language alignment, version labeling, and rights/dependency review. It is related to The Merkaz but not the WordPress site itself.
The Merkaz is a site. TableOfWisdom is a platform.
The Merkaz can use shared platform modules without collapsing the identities of the organization, the TableOfWisdom codebase, and individual products. Site presentation should remain a thin, understandable layer over tested capabilities.
Release gates
Named audience and problem. Usable route. Accessibility and privacy review. Rights and external-dependency review. Reversible data behavior. Evidence from real users. Support owner. Honest status label.
Test with us before we scale.
Learners, teachers, source-sheet authors, and accessibility testers can help turn working prototypes into trustworthy services.