The Talmud in One Article
The Talmud is the rabbinic literature that develops the Oral Torah into the Halacha and the worldview of normative Judaism.
Torah & Texts
Tanakh, Talmud, Midrash, and the library of the tradition
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The Tanakh in One Article
Tanakh is the Hebrew Bible: Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim. Twenty-four books, one canon, the foundation of everything else.
Continue reading →The 613 Mitzvot
The Torah contains 613 commandments — 248 positive and 365 negative. They are the operating program of a Jewish life.
The Oral Torah and Its Authority
Orthodoxy holds that Moshe received both a Written and an Oral Torah at Sinai. The doctrine is the foundation of Halacha.
Pirkei Avot
“Ethics of the Fathers” — the tractate of Jewish ethical wisdom traditionally read between Pesach and Shavuot.
Midrash
The rabbinic genre of creative biblical interpretation — filling gaps, drawing moral lessons, and reading the text in surprising directions.
Chukim, Mishpatim, and Eidot
Three classical categories of mitzvot — laws beyond reason, laws of reason, and laws of testimony.
Megillot
The five biblical scrolls read on five different occasions — most famously the Megillat Esther on Purim.