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Aggadah
The aspect of Jewish, especially Talmudic, literature that embraces all non-legal topics. Aggadah treats of Jewish history, ethics, philosophy, folklore, medicine, astronomy, popular proverbs, pious ...
Agunah
A woman bound or ‘chained’ either to a missing husband or to one who refuses to divorce her. In Jewish law the State cannot intervene to grant a couple a divorce. The only way a married woman can ...
apostasy
The abandonment of Christianity. Until 1983 the term was used in the RC Church also of public defection from the RC Church and of desertion by a professed religious who had taken perpetual vows.
Avodah Zarah
(Heb., ‘idolatrous worship’).Tractate of the Mishnah, tosefta, and Talmud, assigned to the order of ‘Nezikim’ (torts). It includes both halakhic and aggadic material, and deals with the laws ...
Beit Din
(; house of judgment), a court of law guided by the principles of recognized halakhah in dealing with matters of civil, criminal, or religious law. The command to appoint judges ...
Beruryah
(2nd cent. ce).Jewish woman scholar of the Talmud. The wife of R. Meir, she was the only woman in Talmudic literature whose halakhic opinions were respected. In the so-called ...
bioethics
(by-oh-eth-iks)an area of applied ethics relating to moral behaviour in the life sciences. Medical ethics is now often considered a subspecialty of bioethics (biomedical ethics).
Conservative Judaism
The form of the Jewish religion that occupies the middle ground between Orthodox and Reform Judaism, with its centre in the United States, where it is the largest of the three movements, and with ...
David ben Samuel/ha-Levi
(1586–1667).Jewish halakhic authority. At the end of his life, persuaded by his sons, he seems to have given his support to Shabbetai Zevi. His most important work, Turei Zahav ...
Duran Family
A family of rabbis and scholars.Shimʿon ben Tsemah. Duran (1361–1444), rabbinic authority and religious philosopher known by the acronym Rashbats. He studied in his native Majorca and in Aragon. ...
Eleazar of Worms
(d. c.1230) German Pietist; author of biblical, liturgical, midrashic, and Talmudic commentaries.His best-known works are a halakhic treatise, liturgical poems (piyyutim), and ethical and mystical ...
Elijah ben Solomon Zalman
(1720–97).The Vilna Gaon, known as Ha-Gra, a Lithuanian Jewish spiritual leader. He was famous for his great learning and produced more than seventy works and commentaries on the Bible ...
Eruv
(Heb., ‘mixing’).A symbolic act, by which Sabbath restrictions can be circumvented. Such acts include carrying burdens on the Sabbath by amalgamating holdings; walking further than the permitted ...
exegesis, Jewish biblical
Throughout the MA biblical exegesis was one of the most active fields of Jewish literary production, both in Bible commentaries and in linguistic, philosophical, and jurisprudential writings which ...
Frankists
The followers of Jacob Frank (1726–91) in Podolia, south-east Poland, who formed themselves into a Shabbetean sect (see SHABBETAI ZEVI). Frank, a charismatic figure but also, by all accounts, ...
Giving of the Torah
(Heb. mattan Torah), the central event in the establishment of the covenant between God and the Israelite people, in the form of a body of divinely revealed legislation (religious, moral ...
Haggai
A Hebrew minor prophet of the 6th century. Also, a book of the Bible containing his prophecies of a glorious future in the Messianic age.
Hai ben Sherira
(939–1038).Jewish gaon of Pumbedita, hence also known as Hai Gaon. Hai succeeded his father as gaon and was regarded as a supreme halakhic authority. Besides responsa, he also wrote ...
Halakhah Reference library
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
(Heb., from halak, ‘he went’).
A particular law or the whole Jewish legal system. The halakhah is traditionally believed
Halakhah Quick reference
A Concise Companion to the Jewish Religion
The legal side of Judaism, in contradistinction to Aggadah; the latter embracing all the non-legal ideas. In the earliest
