Halakha () ( Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation ) ( ha-la-chAH )— also transliterated Halocho ( Ashkenazic Hebrew pronunciation ) ( ha-LUH-chuh ), or Halacha — is the collective body of religious laws for Jews, including biblical law ( the 613 mitzvot ) and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions.

The name Halakha is derived from the Hebrew halakh ה ָ ל ַ ך ְ, which means " to walk " or " to go "; thus a literal translation does not yield " law ", but rather " the way to go ".

Halakha is often contrasted with Aggadah, the diverse corpus of rabbinic exegetical, narrative, philosophical, mystical, and other " non-legal " literatures.

At the same time, since writers of Halakha may draw upon the aggadic and even mystical literature, there is a dynamic interchange between the genres.

The Halakha is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of human life, both corporeal and spiritual.

Because Halakha is developed and applied by various halakhic authorities, rather than one sole " official voice ", different individuals and communities may well have different answers to halakhic questions.

* Dina d ' malchuta dina (" the law of the land is law "): an additional aspect of Halakha, being the principle recognizing non-Jewish laws and non-Jewish legal jurisdiction as binding on Jewish citizens, provided that they are not contrary to any laws of Judaism.

On the one hand, there is a principle in Halakha not to overrule a specific law from an earlier era, after it got accepted by the community as a law or vow.

See below: How Halakha is viewed today.

Orthodox Judaism holds that Halakha is the divine law as laid out in the Torah ( First five books of Moses ), rabbinical laws, rabbinical decrees and customs combined.

Conservative Judaism holds that Halakha is normative and binding, and is developed as a partnership between people and God based on Sinaitic Torah.

While there are a wide variety of Conservative views, a common belief is that Halakha is, and has always been, an evolving process subject to interpretation by rabbis in every time period.

Orthodox Jews maintain Halakha is derived from the divine law of the Torah ( Bible ), rabbinical laws, rabbinical decrees and customs combined.

Orthodox Jews believe that Halakha is a religious system, whose core represents the revealed will of God.

This work encompasses the full range of Talmudic law ; it is organized and reformulated in a logical system — in 14 books, 83 sections and 1000 chapters — with each Halakha stated clearly.

) It is the main source of practical Halakha for many Yemenite Jews — mainly Baladi and Dor Daim — as well as for a growing community referred to as talmidei haRambam.

A ten volume work, five discussing Halakha at a level " midway between the two extremes: the lengthy Beit Yosef of Caro on the one hand, and on the other Caro's Shulchan Aruch together with the Mappah of Isserles, which is too brief ", that particularly stresses the customs and practices of the Jews of Eastern Europe.

The Mishnah Berurah of Rabbi Yisroel Meir ha-Kohen, ( the " Chofetz Chaim ", Poland, 1838 – 1933 ) is a commentary on the " Orach Chayim " section of the Shulchan Aruch, discussing the application of each Halakha in light of all subsequent Acharonic decisions.

Aruch HaShulchan by Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein ( 1829 – 1888 ) is a scholarly analysis of Halakha through the perspective of the major Rishonim.

Yalkut Yosef, by Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, is a voluminous, widely cited and contemporary work of Halakha, based on the rulings of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Whereas Jewish philosophers often debate whether God is immanent or transcendent, and whether people have free will or their lives are determined, Halakha is a system through which any Jew acts to bring God into the world.

This analysis is often described as " mathematical " in approach ; Adin Steinsaltz makes the analogy of the Amoraim as scientists investigating the Halakha, where the Tanakh, Mishnah, Tosefta and midrash are the phenomena studied.

* In 20th and 21st centuries, Orthodox rabbis often engage in applied ethics by interpreting rabbinic law ( Halakha ) in responsa ( formal opinions ).

Although preimplantation genetic diagnosis ( PGD ) is often approved by Halakha, it is a difficult and costly process.

Rabbinical students at Chofetz Chaim Yeshiva often spend a decade or more at the Yeshiva, studying a traditional yeshiva curriculum focusing on Talmud, Mussar (" ethics "), and Halakha (" Jewish law ").

RABaD was thus an opponent to the codification of the Halakha ; but he was even more strongly opposed to the construction of a system of dogmas in Judaism, particularly according to the method followed by Maimonides, who often set up the concepts of the Aristotelian philosophy as Jewish theology.

" There are few modern works dealing in detail with the Halakha or the Haggadah which have not profited by the labors of Chajes, although his name is often passed over in silence.

Concerning interpretation of Halakha ( or Jewish law ): because of Judaism's legal tradition, the fundamental differences between modern Jewish denominations also involve the relevance, interpretation, and application of Jewish law and tradition.

* Halakha For Our Time: A Conservative Approach To Jewish Law, David Golinkin, United Synagogue, 1991

Historically in the diaspora, Halakha served many Jewish communities as an enforceable avenue of civil and religious law.

Since the Age of Enlightenment, emancipation, and haskalah in the modern era, Jewish citizens are bound to Halakha only by their voluntary consent.

Some differences in Halakha itself are found among Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Yemenite Jews, which are reflective of the historic and geographic diversity of various Jewish communities within the Diaspora.

Halakha constitutes the practical application of the 613 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 as codified in the Mishneh Torah or Shulchan Aruch ( the Jewish " Code of Law ".

Broadly, the Halakha comprises the practical application of the commandments ( each one known as a mitzvah ) in the Torah, as developed in subsequent rabbinic literature ; see The Mitzvot and Jewish Law.

Notwithstanding the potential for innovation, rabbis and Jewish communities differ greatly on how they make changes in Halakha.

An example of how different views of the origin of Jewish law inform Conservative approaches to interpreting that law involves the CJLS's acceptance of Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz's responsum decreeing the Biblical category of mamzer as " inoperative ", in which The CJLS adopted the Responsum's view that of how, in the Conservative view of Halakha, the " morality which we learn through the unfolding narrative of our tradition " informs the application of Mosaic law:

Halakha, the rabbinic Jewish way of life, then, is based on a combined reading of the Torah, and the oral tradition-the Mishnah, the halakhic Midrash, the Talmud and its commentaries.

Instead of just studying Halakha, Louis Ginzberg wrote responsa, formal responses to questions of Jewish law.

* Halakha – Jewish law

It offers additional aggadic and midrashic material, and it sometimes contradicts the Mishnah in the ruling of Halakha ( Jewish religious law ), or in attributing in whose name a law was stated.

The central claim of Kahanism is that the vast majority of the Arabs of Israel are now, and will continue to be, enemies of Jews and Israel itself, and that a Jewish theocratic state, governed by Halakha, absent of a voting non-Jewish population and including Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, areas of modern-day Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and even Iraq should be created.

* The compilation of the Babylonian Talmud, the source of the majority of Jewish Halakha, is completed.

* Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis, on the premise that all the main movements are legitimate expressions of Judaism, will accept the legitimacy of other rabbis ' leadership, though will not accept their views on Jewish law, since Reform and Reconstructionism reject Halakha as binding.

These include moral responsibility for own actions, eligibility to be called to read from the Torah and lead or participate in a Minyan, May possess personal property, May be legally married according to Jewish law, Must follow the 613 laws of the Torah and keep the Halakha, May testify as a witness in a Beth Din ( Rabbinical court ) case.

The idea of a perfect text sanctified in its consonantal base quickly spread throughout the Jewish communities via supportive statements in Halakha, Aggada, and Jewish thought ; and with it increasingly forceful strictures that a deviation in even a single letter would make a Torah scroll invalid.

This custom is not required by Halakha ( Jewish religious law ), however, and Israelites may be called up for all aliyot.