Jewish Law Research Paper

Thousands of years ago, God presented the Ten Commandments to Moses on the top of Mount Sanai. These commandments are very well known and widely accepted, but these were not the only commandments given to Moses by God. When Moses wrote down all of the commandments to create a rough draft of what would become the Torah, he logged all 613 mitzvot (commandments) that the Jewish people should follow—they became laws for the Jewish community to live by. The Jewish population follows these rules because they come directly from God and they are very important in order to live a healthy physical and spiritual life. The role of law in Judaism is that if all of them are followed correctly, then they will dictate any and all actions that one may take from when they are born until when they die. That being said, it seems virtually impossible to follow all six hundred and thirteen rules daily, especially in this modern age. Some of the mitzvot are so specific and obviously don’t apply in modern times or certain situations. Many of the
Halakhah can be broken down into three parts: the commandments/mitzvot, laws instituted by rabbis, and traditions/customs. The mitzvot have already been covered but the laws make by rabbis and the customs are new. These areas add on to the rules of Judaism. For example, the Torah says not to work on Shabbat, but the rabbis take it a step further and say not even to hold things that are related to work, like pencils, because one might forget it is Shabbat and do work even though it is prohibited. The customs and traditions aren’t really laws like the other two, but they are carried on because it is tradition and that is what tradition is. An important aspect of this is that if for some reason, the rabbinic laws and Torah laws interfere with one another, the Torah always take precedence because that is the word of