Halakha

Halakha (Hebrew: הלכה; also transliterated as Halakhah, Halacha, Halachah) is the collective corpus of Jewish rabbinic law, custom and tradition. Like the religious laws in many other cultures, Judaism classically drew no distinction in its laws between religious and non-religious life. Hence, Halakha guides not only religious practices and beliefs, but numerous aspects of day-to-day life.

Terminology

The name Halakha derives from the Hebrew halach הלך meaning "going" or the " way"; thus a literal translation does not yield "law", rather "the way to go." The term Halakha may refer to a single rule, to the literary corpus of rabbinic legal texts, as well as to the overall system of religious law.

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The Halakha is often contrasted with the Aggadah, the diverse corpus of rabbinic exegetical, narrative, philosophical and other "non-legal" literatures. At the same time, since writers of Halakha may draw upon the aggada literature, there is a dynamic interchange between the two genres.

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Halakha constitutes the practical application of the hundreds of the mitzvot ("commandments") (singular: mitzvah) in the Torah, (the five books of Moses, the "Written Law") as developed through discussion and debate in the classical rabbinic literature, especially the Mishnah and the Talmud (the "Oral law") and codified in the Shulkhan Arukh (the Jewish "Code of Law".)

Related Topics:
Mitzvot - Mitzvah - Torah - Moses - Rabbinic literature - Mishnah - Talmud - Oral law - Shulkhan Arukh

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