Sefaria Jewish Library MCP Server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that provides access to Jewish texts from the Sefaria library. This server enables Large Language Models to retrieve and reference Jewish texts through a standardized interface.

Acknowledgments: Special thanks to Sivan for creating the initial foundation of this project.

Features

• Retrieve Jewish texts by reference with version control
• Get all English translations for comparative study
• Retrieve commentaries and connections to texts
• Search the entire Jewish library or within specific books
• Search Jewish dictionaries (Jastrow, BDB, Klein)
• Get bibliographic information and metadata about texts
• Access Jewish calendar information (Hebrew date, Parshat Hashavua, Daf Yomi)
• Validate and autocomplete text names and references
• View the structure of texts and contents of categories
• Browse and filter by topics
• Access manuscript information and pages

Installation

Requires Python 3.10 or higher.

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/Sefaria/mcp-sefaria-server.git
cd mcp-sefaria-server

Running the Server

The server can be run directly:

uv --directory path/to/directory run sefaria_jewish_library

Or through an MCP client that supports the Model Context Protocol. for claude desktop app and cline you should use the following config:

{
  "mcpServers": {        
      "sefaria_jewish_library": {
          "command": "uv",
          "args": [
              "--directory",
              "absolute/path/to/mcp-sefaria-server",
              "run",
              "sefaria_jewish_library"
          ],
          "env": {
            "PYTHONIOENCODING": "utf-8" 
          }
      }
  }
}

Installing via Smithery

To install Sefaria Jewish Library for Claude Desktop automatically via Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install mcp-sefaria-server --client claude

Available tools

The server provides the following tools through the MCP interface:

get_text

Retrieves a specific Jewish text by its reference.

Example:

reference: "Genesis 1:1"
reference: "שמות פרק ב פסוק ג"
reference: "משנה ברכות פרק א משנה א"
version_language: "en" (optional, can be "en", "he", or "all")

get_english_translations

Retrieves all available English translations for a specific reference.

Example:

reference: "Genesis 1:1"

get_links

Retrieves a list of commentaries and connections for a given text.

Example:

reference: "Genesis 1:1"
with_text: 0 (optional, set to 1 to include text content)

search_texts

Searches for Jewish texts in the Sefaria library based on a query.

Example:

query: "moshiach"
slop: 1 (optional)
filters: ["Talmud", "Bavli"] (optional)
size: 5 (optional)

search_dictionaries

Searches specifically in Jewish dictionaries (Jastrow, BDB, Klein).

Example:

query: "shalom"

get_index

Retrieves bibliographic records for Jewish texts.

Example:

title: "Genesis"

get_situational_info

Provides current Jewish calendar information (Hebrew date, Parshat Hashavua, Daf Yomi).

No parameters required.

get_name

Validates and autocompletes text names, references, topics.

Example:

name: "Gen"
limit: 10 (optional)
type_filter: "ref" (optional)

get_shape

Retrieves structure of texts or lists contents of categories.

Example:

name: "Genesis" (for text structure)
name: "Tanakh" (for category contents)

search_in_book

Searches for text within a specific book or corpus.

Example:

query: "light"
book: "Genesis"

get_search_path_filter

Gets valid search filters for the search functionality.

No parameters required.

get_topics

Retrieves topics from the Sefaria library with optional filtering.

Example:

limit: 10 (optional)
topic_slug: "prayer" (optional)

get_manuscript_info

Retrieves information about available manuscripts.

Example:

title: "Genesis"

get_manuscript

Retrieves specific manuscript pages and images.

Example:

manuscript_slug: "manuscript-identifier"
page: 1 (optional)

Development

This project uses:

• MCP SDK for server implementation
• Sefaria API for accessing Jewish texts

Requirements

• Python >= 3.10
• MCP SDK >= 1.1.1
• Sefaria API

License

MIT License

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2024 Sefaria