Halakhah (Halakha)

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HALAKHAH (halakha)

Legal religious code that has regulated the life of Jews since the post-Biblical epoch, gathering the ensemble of precepts and practical commandments of the religious law, from an orthodox perspective. With roots in the Bible, the authority of the Halakhah is based on the Talmud. In order to allow Jews to locate what they are looking for in the arcana of the Halakhah, succinct and practical résumés were composed in the first centuries of our era. The Shulhan Arukh, composed by Joseph Karo in the sixteenth century, is a later codification that has since been the most authoritative.

SEE ALSO Bible;Talmud.