Rabbi Trugman explains that it is through oral tradition that the meanings of the Torah, its commandments and stories, are known and understood.

The Old Testament is called by the Jews the Tanakh, an acronym formed by combining the initials of the three sections by which the Jews divide the text: the Torah, or Law ( the Pentateuch ), the Nevi ' im, or Prophets, and the Ketuvim, or Writings or Hagiographa ( with vowels added, as Hebrew is written with a consonantal script, TaNaKh ).

This order is also quoted in Mishneh Torah Hilchot Sefer Torah 7: 15.

Told largely in the form of a first-person memoir, it concerns the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem by Nehemiah, a Jew who is a high official at the Persian court, and the dedication of the city and its people to God's laws ( Torah ).

Isaiah is the most quoted of all the books of the Hebrew Bible outside of the Torah.

The Book of Numbers ( from Greek Ἀριθμοί, Arithmoi ;, Bəmidbar, " In the desert ") is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah.

Sometimes in series with this rule an exception is made for religious materials such as the Bible, Torah or Qur ' an.

In the Torah, or Old Testament, every seventh year is decreed by Mosaic Law as a Sabbatical year wherein the release of all debts that are owed by members of the community is mandated, but not of " foreigners ".

The Pharisees, who not only accepted the Torah, but the rest of the Hebrew scriptures also, believed in the Resurrection of the Dead, and it is known to have been a major point of contention between the two groups ( see ).

The product of this human-divine encounter is the Torah, the embodiment of God's will revealed pre-eminently to the Jewish people through Moses, the Prophets and the Sages, as well as to the righteous and wise of all nations.

Conservative Judaism is comfortable with higher criticism, including the documentary hypothesis, the theory that the Torah was redacted from several earlier sources.

In this view, Oral Torah is considered inspired by Torah, but not necessarily of a straightforward divine origin.

This idea is first found in the Torah ( the five books of Moses, which are also included in the Christian Bible ) and is elaborated on in later books of the Hebrew Bible.

The Oral Torah is the primary guide for Jews to abide by these terms, as expressed in tractate Gittin 60b, " the Holy One, Blessed be He, did not make His covenant with Israel except by virtue of the Oral Law " to help them learn how to live a holy life, and to bring holiness, peace and love into the world and into every part of life, so that life may be elevated to a high level of kedushah, originally through study and practice of the Torah, and since the destruction of the Second Temple, through prayer as expressed in tractate Sotah 49a " Since the destruction of the Temple, every day is more cursed than the preceding one ; and the existence of the world is assured only by the kedusha ... and the words spoken after the study of Torah.

Most of our knowledge of ancient Hebrew medicine during the 1st millennium BC comes from the Torah, i. e. the Five Books of Moses, which contain various health related laws and rituals, such as isolating infected people ( Leviticus 13: 45-46 ), washing after handling a dead body ( Numbers 19: 11-19 ) and burying excrement away from camp ( Deuteronomy 23: 12-13 ).

These have been expounded by commentaries of various Torah scholars during the ages.

In the study of Torah, the sages formulated and followed various logical and hermeneutical principles.

Most of our knowledge of ancient Hebrew medicine during the 1st millennium BC comes from the Torah, i. e. the Five Books of Moses, which contain various health related laws and rituals.

The Torah ( Pentateuch in Greek ) always maintained its pre-eminence as the basis of the canon ; but the collection of prophetic writings, based on the Jewish Nevi ' im, had various hagiographical works incorporated into it.

Rabbinic writings offer various ideas on when the Torah was composed.

Torah scrolls are often dressed with a sash, a special Torah cover, various ornaments and a Keter ( crown ), although such customs vary among synagogues.

It is still used for Jewish scrolls, of the Torah in particular, for luxury book-binding, memorial books, and for various documents in calligraphy.

The women's schools are represented by the Stern College and Syms Student Councils ; there are also a Torah Activities Council, which coordinates Jewish-related events, and individual class councils, along with various clubs.

The messages are purported to be hidden in the Torah, and can be deciphered by placing the letters of various Torah passages at equal intervals in a text that has been formatted to fit inside a graph.

This is seen in his work known as the Mishnah Torah, in the Guide for the Perplexed, and in the various shorter writings he composed.

A special abbreviated Amidah is also the core of the Mussaf (" Additional ") service that is recited on Shabbat ( the Jewish Sabbath ), Rosh Chodesh ( the day of the New Moon ), and Jewish festivals, after the morning Torah reading, with various forms of the Amidah that depend on the occasion.

The first is the " fragmentary model ", which holds that the Torah grew gradually from a host of fragments of various lengths.

Orthodox Jews view male homosexuality as explicitly prohibited by the Torah, but other Jews view various forms of homosexual behavior or all forms of homosexual behavior as permitted by the tradition.

Dancing in the street with the Torah has become part of the holiday's ritual in various Jewish congregations in the United States as well.

Over time many textual errors and distortions have appeared in the various editions of Maimonides ' " Mishneh Torah ".

As for halakha l ' maaseh ( practical application of Jewish law ), although the majority of Jews keep Jewish law according to various other Rabbinic codes organized around the Shulchan Aruch, an increasing number of Yemenite Jews, as well as various other individuals, are being attracted to the Mishneh Torah as their choice code of Jewish law by which to live.

Rav Arusi and the organization Makhon Mishnath haRambam have published several books filled with commentary on various parts and aspects of the Mishneh Torah as well as topics related to the Yemenite Jewish community.

Unlike Maimonides ' Mishneh Torah, the Tur is not limited to normative positions, but compares the various opinions on any disputed point.

Rabbinic Tradition recognizes that achieving an appropriate balance could pose both practical and philosophic challenges ( e. g. the requirement for secular education as opposed to limited vocational training ), and the various issues are therefore widely discussed – in various tractates in the Talmud ( see Berachot 35b ), in the halakhic literature ( e. g. Mishneh Torah Deot Ch. 5, Talmud Torah Ch. 3 ), as well as in Jewish Philosophy, Hasidic thought and Musar ( ethical ) literature.

There are people of religions besides Judaism, or even those without religious affiliation, who delve in the Zohar out of curiosity, or as a technology for people who are seeking meaningful and practical answers about the meaning of their lives, the purpose of creation and existence and their relationships with the laws of nature, and so forth ; however from the perspective of traditional, rabbinic Judaism, and by the Zohar's own statements, the purpose of the Zohar is to help the Jewish people through and out of the Exile and to infuse the Torah and mitzvot ( Judaic commandments ) with the wisdom of Kabbalah for its Jewish readers.

Additionally, Hadrian prohibits public reading of the Torah under penalty of death, as well as observance of festivals and the Sabbath, the teaching of Judaic Law, and the ordination of rabbis.

# Yeshiva ketana (" junior yeshiva ")-Many yeshivot ketanot in Israel and some in the Diaspora do not have a secular course of studies and all students learn Judaic Torah studies full-time.

Midrash halakha ( Hebrew: ה ֲ ל ָ כ ָ ה ‎) was the ancient Judaic rabbinic method of Torah study that expounded upon the traditionally received 613 Mitzvot (" laws ") by identifying their sources in the Tanakh ( Hebrew Bible ), and by interpreting these passages as proofs of the laws ' authenticity.

Though they do not identify with Christian democracy directly, being Judaic, Israel's Shas ( orthodox Sephardic Orthodox party ) and United Torah Judaism ( orthodox Ashkenazi party ) are politically similar to Christian democratic parties, due to their combination of conservative social and religious policies with an emphasis on increased social spending.

According to Judaic beliefs, the Torah rules out a trinitarian God in Deuteronomy ( 6: 4 ): " Hear Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.

Judaic studies usually include study of Torah ( commonly referred to as Chumash ), Nevi ' im ( Prophets ), and other parts of the Hebrew Bible ; instruction in Hebrew language ; Jewish history ; and study of practical Halacha ( Jewish law ), sometimes directly from the text, and sometimes as a summary of classic Halacha sources.

Judaic studies at Akiva include Halacha, hashkafa, Torah Sheba ' al Peh ( oral Torah ), Chumash, Navi, Ivrit and Jewish history.

While most Jewish anarchists were irreligious or even vehemently anti-religious, some Jewish anarchist and anti-authoritarian thinkers, such as Martin Buber, rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, Isaac Nachman Steinberg and Gustav Landauer, were religious or religiously inclined and often referred to the Torah, Talmud and other traditional Judaic sources, claiming that anarchist ideas are deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition.

The classical commentary of Rashi ( Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki 1040-1105 ), who cites older sources from Judaism's Oral Torah, which is relied upon by traditional Judaic scholarship as the most basic commentary to the present time, provides an introductory explanation.