 Halachah ("The Way" - ie. Jewish way of living) is Jewish law. The
Halachah extends not only to areas such as property and crime, but
has much to say on spiritual and religious matters.
The Halachah uses basic Jewish texts as a starting point.
Halachic Codes collect relevant discussions together from various
sources in the Tanach, Talmud, and Midrash to create guidebooks to
having a (certain kind of) Jewish way of life.
Two of the most famous Halachic Codes - the
Mishneh Torah and the Shulchan Aruch.
"Mishneh
Torah" ("The Second Law")
is the name used in the Bible itself to designate the book of
Deuteronomy, which is a kind summary or review of the rest of the
Torah. Maimonides' Mishneh Torah was intended to be a summary of
the entire body of Jewish religious law.
The Mishneh Torah is sometimes referred to as the Yad Ha-Hazaqah,
"the mighty arm." This is a play on the numerological value of the
Hebrew word for arm, "yad," which is 14, equal to the number of
volumes in this code.
The author actually referred to the book as "Sefer Mehoqeq" ("The
Book of Legislation"), a title which is rarely employed.
Rambam lived from 1138 to 1204. He spent ten full years compiling
the Mishneh Torah, which he continued to revise throughout his
lifetime.
Moses Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, usually referred
to in Hebrew by the acronym "RaMBa"M) was one of the towering
figures in medieval intellectual and religious life. In addition
to his law code, he excelled in the fields of philosophy, science,
medicine, exegesis and communal leadership. Though born in Spain,
in his youth his family fled religious persecution, settling in
Egypt.
Maimonides' literary output includes: a work on philosophical
logic; an Arabic commentary to the Mishnah; an enumeration of the
613 precepts of the Torah; the Mishneh Torah law code; the Arabic
philosophical treatise The Guide of the Perplexed; and many
letters and responsa addressed to various Jewish communities.
Place: Fustat (now Cairo), Egypt.
The
Mishneh Torah is composed
in Rabbinic Hebrew, after the style of the Mishnah. It is divided
up into fourteen general sections (similar to the "orders" of the
Mishnah), each of which is further subdivided into books (like
tractates), and then into numbered chapters and laws.
Some of the distinctive features of the Mishneh Torah are the
following:
It encompasses the full range of Jewish law, as formulated for all
ages and places. Most other Jewish law codes confined themselves
to laws that were in force in their own times and lands, thereby
excluding rules that apply only in the Land of Israel, under an
independent Jewish kingdom, or that could not be observed
following the destruction of the Temple.
It completely reorganizes and reformulates the laws in a clear and
logical system. Earlier codes had followed the Talmud's sometimes
haphazard arrangement with only very few attempts to improve on
that order.
It presents the normative rulings without any discussion or
explanation of how the decisions were reached.
It opens with a section on systematic philosophical theology,
derived largely from Aristotelian science and metaphysics, which
it regards as the most important component of Jewish law. Most
other Jewish codes avoided mixing creed and religious law; and
Maimonides' interpretation of Jewish religion in terms of Greek
ideas aroused much opposition.
The
Mishneh Torah is in a terse legal Hebrew, similar in style to
that of the Mishnah.
if I want to read it... Much of the
Mishneh Torah is translated in an edition published by Moznaim.
This edition includes notes. Other parts of Mishneh Torah exist in
smaller translations |
