halacha

Halacha, from Hebrew halakha, meaning "the way to walk" or "the path," refers to the collective body of Jewish religious law that governs daily life and worship. It encompasses a wide range of obligations and permissions, including ritual commandments (mitzvot), dietary laws, Sabbath and festival observance, prayer, family and civil matters, and issues of ritual purity. Halacha is not a single statute but a dynamic process of deriving and applying law from earlier biblical, rabbinic, and later sources.

Its primary sources are the Written Torah (the Five Books of Moses) and the Oral Torah, which is recorded in the Mishnah and Gemara (the Talmud). Over centuries, legal reasoning was organized into codifications and later responsa. The most influential codifications are Maimonides' Mishneh Torah and Joseph Karo's Shulchan Aruch, with the glosses of Moses Isserles noted as the standard text in many communities. The practice of producing legal rulings is called psak halacha, and the authorities who issue them are poseks.

Halacha is distinguished from minhag (custom) and from aggadic or homiletic material that lacks binding authority. In contemporary Jewish life, different movements approach halacha differently: Orthodox Judaism generally treats halacha as binding; Conservative Judaism seeks to interpret and adapt halacha while preserving its authority; Reform Judaism tends to view many traditional laws as non-binding and emphasizes ethical and spiritual principles. Halacha continues to address practical questions, including dietary laws, Sabbath and prayer observance, family law, and modern issues arising from medicine and technology.