Loading and displaying JSON quickly in PhoneGap app
Although I doubt it will make a big difference and help you much,
but it would be more efficient to move operations out of the function whose input and output never change. Such as these:


var path = window.location.href.replace('index.html', '');
path + "data/heb-text/"


No need to execute these every time a tap is fired.
You could execute these once, save the result in a variable,
and use those variables inside the tap handler.

If the document structure doesn't change,
then you could save processing time by caching these dom lookups too:


$('.date')
$('.title')
$('ol')
$("html, body")


Again, this might not make a big difference, but perhaps worth a shot anyway.