Halakha

“ HAGGADA, or ’Agada (literally “narrative”) , includes the more homiletic elements of rabbinic teaching. It is not logically distinguishable from the halakha (q.v.) , for the latter or forensic element makes up with the haggada the Midrash (q.v.) , but, being more popular than the halakha, is often itself styled the Midrash. ”

“ She is the Halakha (law; walking) of the King when she goes out to him in two legs which are the two Pillars of Truth. And when she goes up to him in the body in the King's two arms she's called Kabbalah. ”

“ No country is fully governed by halakha, but Jewish people may decide to settle disputes through Jewish courts and be bound by their rulings. Canon law is not a divine law as such because it is not found in revelation. It is viewed instead as human law inspired by the word of God and applying the demands of that revelation to the actual situation of the church. Canon law regulates the internal ordering of the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. ”

“ What does one say if he or she is going to consume different types of food together? The halakha holds that one blessing will suffice for all of the food present, and the blessing that is said can be for any of the foods present. ”

“ The House of Shammai holds that the blessings said for appetizers do not satisfy the requirement to bless for the main course, but the House of Hillel's view, which is followed in the halakha, is that it does if the person saying the blessing desires so. ”

“ Rabbi limits the permission to seven (rivets) . If the soles are made of leather and the uppers are riveted, it is permitted. If the rivets are made like hooks, or are flat-headed, or pointed, or pierce through the sandal to protect the sole, it is permitted.
R. Massna, others say R. Ahadboy b. Massna in the name of R. Massna, said: "The Halakha does not prevail in accordance with Elazar b. Simeon." Is this not self-evident? When one individual opinion conflicts with a majority, the opinion of the majority prevails. ”

“ Three persons will never come to Gehenna. Three classes of human beings die in the possession of their power of speech. If foes or an evil spirit have carried a man into another town? The Halakha about which R. Gamaliel and R. Aqiba disputed the whole day, on board the ship. ”

“ We must now return to the 2nd century. During the period which followed the later canonical books, not only was translation, and therefore exegesis, cultivated, but even more the amplification of the Law. According to Jewish teaching Halakhah. (e.g. Abhoth i. 1) Moses received on Mount Sinai not only the written Law as set down in the Pentateuch, but also the Oral Law, which he communicated personally to the 70 elders and through them by a “chain of tradition” to succeeding ages. The application of this oral law is called Halakhah, the rules by which a man’s daily “walk” is regulated. ”

“ Divine revelation of principles and prohibitions in the Hebrew Scriptures form the basis of Jewish law, or halakhah, which is a key component of the faith. While there are extensive traditions of Jewish halakhic and theological discourse, there is no final dogmatic authority in the tradition. Local communities have their own religious leadership. ”

“ For, the Talmidei Chakhamim/Torah Scholars are aspect of Yom Tov. For, the holiness of Yom Tov depends on them, as Rabeinu n"y wrote in LM #135, for the three judges who determine the decision are in the aspect of halakhah kerabim/the halakhah follows the majority, as brought in the Tikunim, "D'leit rabim pachot mitlat, d'inun misitra de'avahan, de`alaihu itmar halakhah kerabim/For, there is no majority with less than three, who are form the side of their Patriarchs, of whom it was said 'the halakhah goes in accordance with the rabim/majority/great ones'." ”

“ About the measuring of twilight, the Tannaim and the Amoraim disagree at the end of the chapter “Bameh Madlikin” [the second chapter of Shabbat] . The Ba’al HaIttur wrote that there is doubt for us regarding whom the halakhah is like; therefore, if the head of the child was coming out from sunset, there is doubt until twilight according to R. Yose is completed, and the child is circumcised on the 10th day. If the child was born Saturday night from sunset on, we follow the stringency of Rabba.
Seif 13 – If a Jew has born to him a son by a non-Jew, he does not circumcise him on Shabbat. ”

“ And the authority of Halachah was the will of God. It is easy to pick out from the Mishnah [103] instances of minute regulation upon points of no apparent importance—such, for instance, as the rules for dealing with an egg laid upon the Sabbath. If a Pharisee were challenged upon that, or any similar case, he would say: "The Torah, the divine revelation, extends over the whole of life; and its principles, when drawn out and applied to that particular case, yield the results stated in the Halachah, bearing thereon. ”

“ Jehuda Halevi believed that he had not only cut away the ground from beneath the philosophical views of his time, but that he had also undermined the foundations both of Christianity and Islam, and laid down the criterion by which the true could be distinguished from the false religion. Judaism does not feed its adherents with the hope of a future world full of bliss, but grants them here on earth a glimpse of the heavenly kingdom, and raises, through an enduring chain of indisputable facts, the hope of the immortality of the soul to the plane of absolute certainty. ”

“ At the same time it gave rise also to ritualistic piety, which, while tenaciously clinging to the traditional practice of the law, fostered hair-splitting casuistry and caused the petrifaction of religion in the codified Halakah. As doctrine it impressed its ethical and humane idealism upon the people, lifting them far above the narrow confines of nationality, and making them a nation of thinkers. Hence their eagerness for their mission to impart the wisdom stored in their writings to all humanity as its highest boon and the very essence of divine wisdom. ”

“ But the Halachah, as the reader will wish to [101] remind me, came very much more closely home to the Jew than a code of civil and criminal law could do. It was the rule of his private and domestic life, it defined his conduct both towards God and his fellow-man. Certainly it did. And the Pharisee would say, "Why not? Do I not need to serve God in everything I do, however small? And if the Torah can teach me exactly—yes, very exactly—what is most pleasing to Him, shall I not thankfully receive that teaching, and the more of it the better?" ”

“ To those who know only the trading Jew of our commercial centres, the modern Sadducees, it reveals a new aspect of the race—that of the Jew turning aside from all enterprise, content to live in pious mendicancy, his sole business the observance of the minutiae of the ceremonial law; the Jew who binds on his phylactery, wears long ringlets brought down in front of the ears in obedience to a Levitical precept, and shuns the carrying of a pocket-handkerchief on the Sabbath, save as a bracelet or a garter. Haluka is a mistake and a stumbling-block in the path of Zionism. ”

“ The liberal Jew, as well as the orthodox, believes that no other religion does this in the same way as does Judaism. Putting it crudely, the Jew would perhaps admit that Christianity has absorbed, developed, enlarged and purified the Hebrew ethics, but he would, rightly or wrongly, think that it has obscured by dogmatic accretions the Jewish Monotheism. On the other hand, the Jew would admit that Islam has absorbed and purified the Jewish Monotheism, but has done less of the flattery of imitation to the Hebrew ethics. Islam has certainly a pure creed ”

“ While official Judaism was committed to the dialectics of the Halakah, in the unofficial Haggadah mysticism exercised a potent influence by underground channels, as it were, issuing in later days in Kabbalah and offsetting the rational philosophies borrowed from Hellas. ”

“ Starting from this point, the religious philosopher, Jehuda Halevi, has an easy task to unfold proofs of the truth and divine character of Judaism. Philosophy discards God and religion entirely, not knowing what place to assign to them in the world. Christianity and Islam turn their backs on reason, for they find reason in opposition to the cardinal doctrines of their religions. ”

“ To the older generation of Halachists succeeded a set of men headed by Akiba ben Joseph, who, ignoring practical issues, evolved laws from the Bible text or from traditions held to be divine. A spiritual, truly religious conception of Judaism was supplanted by legal quibbling and subtle methods of interpretation. Like the sophists of Rome and Alexandria at that time, the most celebrated teachers in the academies of Babylonia and Palestine for centuries gave themselves up to casuistry. ”

“ Nevertheless, these students represent an idea which must not be allowed to die; they have kept alive some aspects of Judaism for the Jewish people. The Hebrew university would go a long way to inspire the Halukah with the idea that they did not exist merely for themselves. ”

“ Thus faulty proof rather than faulty inference is illustrated when the word “in-number” (Ex. xii. 4) was used to confirm the Halaka that the man who killed the Passover Lamb must know how many people were about to share it (Jew. Ency. viii. 570) ., Often the biblical text cannot be said to supply more than a hint or a suggestion, and the particular application in Halaka or Haggada must be taken on its merits, and the teaching does not necessarily fall because the exegesis is illegitimate. ”

“ Like every other special legislation, the Halacha is bound to definite conditions and times, while the Agada concerns itself with the eternal verities. The creations of the philosophers, poets, and moralists are more permanent than the work of legislators.
Beautiful as the Agada is, and with all its profundity, it lacks breadth. It rests wholly on the national, not on a universal basis. It would be vain to seek in it for the comprehensive universalism of the Prophets. Every lofty ideal is claimed as exclusively Jewish. ”

“ Now, legality is nothing more nor less than Judaism. It is seeking salvation after the pattern of the Old Testament, and not after that of the New. It is a matter of works, and not a matter of faith. It inquires “What good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” It is the child of the bondwoman and not that of the free. It is Ishmael and not Isaac. It is Sinai and not Calvary.
And so it happens that many Christians are simply good Jews. They may even possess circumcised hearts, and may yet serve the Lord in the spirit of bondage, as did good Jews of old. ”

“ The halakoth are fuller and sometimes older than the corresponding decisions in the Mishnah, and the treatment is generally more haggadic. [10] The method of making the discussions part of an interpretation of the Old Testament (halakic Midrash) , as exemplified in the Tōsephtā, is apparently older than the abstract and independent decisions of the Mishnah—which presuppose an acquaintance with the Pentateuchal basis—and, like the employment of narrative or historical Midrash (e.g. in the Pentateuch, Chronicles and Jubilees) , was more suitable for popular exposition than for the academies. ”

“ And, so far as the Torah consisted of precepts, positive and negative, the "hedge" was of the nature of warnings whereby a man might be saved from transgression before it was too late. The detailed mass of precept elaborated in the course of centuries, known as the Halachah (see Chapter II.) or rule of right conduct, and finally embodied in the Talmud, was part of the Torah itself made explicit, the divine teaching so far as it related to such and such departments of conduct. ”

“ We acknowledge the unity and eternity of God, and that all men are derived from Adam-Noah. We absolutely reject embodiment, and if any element of this appears in the Writ, we explain it as a metaphor and allegory. At the same time we maintain that our Book is the Speech of God, being a miracle which we are bound to accept for its own sake, since no one is able to bring anything similar to it, or to one of its verses. Our prophet is the Seal of the prophets, who abrogated every previous law, and invited all nations to embrace Islam. ”

“ And this is because we have dwelt among the gentiles and learned from them, etc. In truth, the Jewish people are above nature, only when they sin, G-d forbid, then, etc. {This sentence is unfinished}. When Hashem wants to save the Jewish people from their exile, he then bestows upon them divine providence from the ends of the earth. In the future, nature will be nullified completely and there will be nothing except divine providence alone, as it is written (Isaiah 51:6) "for the heavens shall vanish like smoke", etc. ”

“ That I take to be the theory of the Haggadah, the explanation which a Haggadist would give of the reason for his peculiar treatment of Scripture. Haggadah, like Halachah, is a natural, perhaps even a necessary, development of a religion of Torah. Both are [243] integral parts of Torah; and a thorough understanding of the nature and function of each is necessary for the understanding of the whole. Halachah and Haggadah, together with the personal spiritual life of the individual, cover the whole field of the religious consciousness of the Pharisee. ”