Instant deskשנים מקרא
לְעוֹלָם יַשְׁלִים אָדָם פָּרָשִׁיּוֹתָיו עִם הַצִּבּוּר, שְׁנַיִם מִקְרָא וְאֶחָד תַּרְגּוּם

A person should always complete his portions with the congregation: the Mikra twice and the Targum once.

This line is why Instant desk exists.

Instant desk · for shnayim mikra ve'echad targum

Twice the Mikra. Once the Targum. Every week.

Instant desk is a Chumash for your computer, built for one mitzvah: reading the week's parasha with the congregation, shnayim mikra ve'echad targum. You press Space and it keeps your place. Everything else stays out of the way.

Preparing a bar mitzvah? Press L and learn the reading one word at a time, every ta'am in its colour.

Works offline. No account, no ads, no streaks.

בראשית · ראשון א׳:א מקרא
תרגום

Read the Hebrew aloud, then press Space. Only one word on the page changes: the beat in the running head. The letters stay where your eyes left them.

What's on the desk

Each feature serves the reading. Nothing else made the cut.

דףThe page

A Chumash page, not a scrolling feed

The text fills the screen the way an open Chumash fills your view: whole verses, paragraph after paragraph, every petucha and setuma starting on its own line. When you finish a page, the next one appears. Nothing slides or fades.

  • No near-empty screens. A short paragraph moves to the next page only if this one is at least 60% full.
  • Pages never cross into the next parasha.
  • The Hebrew never gets narrower than 560 px. When Rashi needs room, it goes underneath.
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃

Set in Ezra SIL, a face drawn for pointed biblical Hebrew. Nikud and te'amim are shaped exactly as the Masorah gives them.

שמו״תThe conductor

One key keeps the count

Space moves you through each page in the order of the practice: Mikra, Mikra, Targum, then the next page. Shift+Space goes back. The running head shows which reading you're on, so you never wonder whether you've read it once or twice.

Close the desk in the middle of the week and it opens again at the same verse and the same beat, with Rashi and te'amim as you left them.

SpaceForward one beat ⇧ SpaceBack one beat AJump to any of the seven aliyot LLearning mode, and back to the desk שOn a Hebrew keyboard the letters work too: ר ש צ א כ מ ל ך
תרגוםOnkelos

Onkelos you can read aloud

The Targum is fully vocalized, following the Yemenite Taj tradition, so you can say it as fluently as the Hebrew. It sits under the Hebrew on an ordinary screen and beside it on a wide one, verse for verse.

  • Each Targum line starts at most one verse, so you never lose your place.
  • Shown one size smaller than the Mikra, as in a printed Chumash.
בְּקַדְמִין בְּרָא יְיָ יָת שְׁמַיָּא וְיָת אַרְעָא׃

Onkelos on Genesis 1:1, vocalized according to the Yemenite Taj.

רש״יRashi

Rashi when you want him

Press R and Rashi's comments on the verses on the page appear beneath the Targum. Rashi scrolls on his own, so the Chumash stays put while you read the commentary. Press R again and the page is quiet.

The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 285:2) counts Rashi's commentary in place of the Targum, and says the God-fearing read both. The desk lets you do either.

בראשית. אָמַר רַבִּי יִצְחָק לֹא הָיָה צָרִיךְ לְהַתְחִיל אֶת הַתּוֹרָה אֶלָּא מֵהַחֹדֶשׁ הַזֶּה לָכֶם…

Rashi in Hebrew, from the Rosenbaum & Silbermann edition. Every comment in the Torah is included.

טעמיםTa'amim

See the music of the verse

Press M to show the te'amim. Press T and each word is tinted by its ta'am, so every musical phrase reads as one coloured run, from the munach that leads in to the etnachta that ends it. Hover a word for its name in Hebrew, with the Sephardi and Ashkenazi names beside it.

  • Families colour each ta'am by its family. Hierarchy shades only the pauses, darkest for the strongest.
  • Focus picks one ta'am, such as tevir, counts it in the parasha, and N jumps to its next appearance.
  • The colours come from a full analysis of the Masoretic text, done ahead of time for every verse. Nothing is guessed while you read.

Hue is the family, shade is the mark. The colours are built on the Okabe-Ito palette, designed to stay distinct for colour-blind readers. One key turns them off. This page is set in the same colours.

לימודLearning mode

Learn your Torah reading, one word at a time

Press L and the desk becomes a practice room for a bar mitzvah reading. Onkelos and Rashi step aside. The Mikra stays, with every ta'am. One word is lit at a time, in the colour of its own ta'am. Chant it, press Space, and the next word lights up. When the reading reaches the bottom of the page, the page turns by itself.

  • Choose the range: the maftir, any of the seven aliyot, or the whole parasha. The maftir of every parasha is built in.
  • Words joined by a maqaf are one step, the way they're chanted.
  • The running head names the current ta'am in Hebrew, by Sephardi or Ashkenazi custom.
  • A quiet percentage in the corner shows how far into the range you've reached. Going back to drill a pasuk never lowers it.

Press L again and the desk is exactly where you left it, so practising the bar mitzvah reading never loses your place in the week's parasha.

בראשית · מפטירו׳:הלימודמֻנַּח
וַיַּ֣רְא יְהֹוָ֔ה כִּ֥י רַבָּ֛ה רָעַ֥ת הָאָדָ֖ם בָּאָ֑רֶץ2%
עליותAliyot

Pick up where your week left off

Some people read a little every day. Press A for the parasha's seven aliyot and go straight to Shelishi. Click any verse number in the margin to jump to that pasuk. Shift+Space right after a jump takes you back to where you were.

When the parasha is done, keep pressing Space. The desk goes on into the next parasha and the next book, all the way to the end of Devarim.

ראשון · שני · שלישי · רביעי · חמישי · שישי · שביעי

All 54 parashot, plus the 7 pairs that are sometimes read together.

כתיבKetiv gloss

What's written, beside what's read

In a few places the Torah is written one way and read another. The page shows the qere, the word you say. Press K and a small circle marks each one, with the written ketiv in the margin, as in a printed Chumash.

  • The note sits beside the text. The verse, its letters and its line breaks don't move.
  • Each place comes from the Masoretic text itself, all 36 in this edition, and works in learning mode too.
עַל־הָאָרֶץ הַיְצֵא אִתָּךְ
הוצאכ׳

Genesis 8:17. Read הַיְצֵא, written הוצא.

מסורהThe text

Every letter as the Masorah has it

The Mikra follows Miqra according to the Masorah, a careful edition of the Aleppo Codex tradition. The desk shows it letter for letter: no normalizing, no "fixed" spellings, ketiv and qere kept. It's all on your computer, so it works on a plane, in a sukkah, or anywhere without Wi-Fi.

  • Never connects to the internet. Your reading stays private.
  • Every edition is openly licensed and credited, from the Mikra to the fonts.
פְּתוּחָה · סְתוּמָה

The Masorah's open and closed paragraphs decide where each page's paragraphs begin. Where the Masorah breaks mid-verse, as in the Ten Commandments, that is recorded too.

Why it's different

Most apps compete for your attention. This one gives it back to the text.

Built for the reading

It isn't a library or a course. It does two things well: shnayim mikra ve'echad targum every week, and learning to read your own portion from the Torah.

A still page

No animation, no badges, no pop-ups, no gradients. Your lips move and the page doesn't. A Chumash shouldn't fidget.

The Hebrew comes first

Commentary can make room for itself, but never by narrowing the Hebrew. The verse keeps its full width.

Te'amim you can see

The te'amim colours come from the structure of each verse, so a whole musical phrase lights up as one. In learning mode, one lit word leads the student through the reading, word by word.

Yours, offline

No account, no server, no tracking. Install it once and it's ready every week for the rest of your life.

Honest about its sources

Every edition is named and openly licensed, with sources one key away. Credit goes to the scholars whose work it is.

5books of the Torah
54parashot, 7 aliyot each
5,846verses, with Onkelos
7,816comments of Rashi

Coming soon

Instant desk is almost ready. Then it's yours every week.

We're preparing the first release. When it arrives, you'll set it up once on the computer where you learn. It opens at Bereshit, and from then on it's waiting at your place every week, with nothing to sign up for and no connection needed.

Until then, try the page above. It runs on the same text and the same te'amim as the desk.