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.

Halakha is often translated as " Jewish Law ", although a more literal translation might be " the path " or " the way of walking ".

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.

It is therefore intricately related to the development of Halakha.

Sefer ha-Halachot plays a fundamental role in the development of Halakha.

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.

God wants the children of Israel to return to their home in order to establish a Jewish sovereign state in which Jews could live according to the laws of Torah and Halakha and commit the Mitzvot of Eretz Israel ( these are religious commandments which can be performed only in the land of Israel ).

He is best known as author of one of the earliest codifications of Halakha, the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol.

Some historians have written that many Sabbateans became followers of Hasidism, which unlike Zevi's movement, followed Halakha ( Jewish law ) and eventually opponents of Hasidism were convinced that the Hasidim were not Sabbateans.

The Mishnah Berurah is accompanied by additional in-depth glosses called Be ' ur Halakha, a reference section called Sha ' ar Hatziyun ( these two were also written by the Chofetz Chaim ), and additional commentaries called Be ' er Hagolah, Be ' er Heitev, and Sha ' arei Teshuvah.

It comprises the legal and ritual Halakha, the collective body of Jewish laws, and exegesis of the written Law ; and the non-legalistic Aaggadah, a compendium of Rabbinic homilies of the parts of the Pentateuch not connected with Law.

Yosef gives strong preference to the written word and does not attribute significant weight to minhagim and traditions which are not well anchored in the Halakha.

The term Halakha LeMoshe MiSinai, literally " Law to Moses from Sinai ", is used in classical Rabbinical literature to refer to oral law regarded as having been of direct Divine origin, transmitted to Moses at Mount Sinai at the same time as the written Torah, but not included in the Oral Torah's exposition of it.

In this work, Rabbi Danzig collected and critically sifted the Acharonic material in the field of the Halakha written in the more than two and a half centuries since the appearance of the Shulchan Aruch.

Yam Shel Shlomo, Luria's major work of Halakha, was written on sixteen tractates of the Talmud ; however, it is extant on only seven.

Because many of the Rebbe's lessons were delivered on Sabbaths and Jewish holidays, when it is forbidden to write ( according to Halakha, " Jewish law "), the material had to be written down later.

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.

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

Under contemporary Israeli law, however, certain areas of Israeli family and personal status law are under the authority of the rabbinic courts and are therefore treated according to Halakha.

The term Halakha may refer to a single law, to the literary corpus of rabbinic legal texts, or to the overall system of religious law.

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 ".

In antiquity, the Sanhedrin functioned essentially as the Supreme Court and legislature for Judaism, and had the power to administer binding law, including both received law and its own Rabbinic decrees, on all Jews — rulings of the Sanhedrin became Halakha ; see Oral law.

Notably, poskim frequently extend the application of a law to new situations, but do not consider such applications as constituting a " change " 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: