About the project
Rav Alex Blend expounded the Torah. His lectures on all 54 weekly portions are available as stenograms: the Hebrew text of each verse, a transliteration, his own translation and his commentary, just as it was spoken. In the Russian original they appear on alexblend.com.
What this site is
Here the stenograms are available in further languages: German, French and English, with Estonian to follow. On every page the Russian original is one click away, and it can be shown below each paragraph.
How the translation is done
The translation is always made from the Russian, sentence by sentence: nothing is added, nothing is left out, nothing is smoothed over. The repetitions and peculiarities of the spoken lecture are kept. The Hebrew text is never touched; it appears exactly as in the original. Alex Blend translated his Bible verses himself; what is translated is his rendering, not a published Bible translation.
The translations are made with the help of AI; a second, independent pass then compares each paragraph with the original and reports anything that is missing or differs. Where a translation deliberately departs from the Russian because a play on words or a turn of phrase cannot be carried over, there is a small with an explanation. The texts nevertheless still need to be reviewed by native speakers. Anyone who finds a mistake can report it below each portion.
Listening
The German stenograms are gradually also becoming available as audio versions. They are read by synthetic voices: the commentary by one voice, the verses in German and in Hebrew by two others. Hebrew names are spoken in the form in which they appear in the German text; where a voice cannot pronounce a name, it reads the German form.
Images
The illustrations for the weekly portions come from alexblend.com.