Orthodox Judaism [first Edition] | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Orthodox Judaism [first Edition]

ORTHODOX JUDAISM [FIRST EDITION] is the branch of Judaism that adheres most strictly to the tenets of the religious law (halakhah). Its forebears may be identified in the eighteenth century, by which time the qehillah, the Jewish communal organization in each locality, had lost much of its authority in central and western Europe and its prestige in eastern Europe. This, in turn, undermined religious authority, which had heretofore relied not only on the faith of each Jew but also on communal consensus and the formal authority and prestige of communal leaders. The breakdown of the traditional community, coupled with the hope and expectation of political emancipation, encouraged new interpretations of Jewish life and new conceptions of appropriate relationships between Jews and non-Jews. These began to emerge by the end of the eighteenth century in central and western Europe and somewhat later in eastern Europe. Orthodoxy was born as the ideological and organizational response to these new conceptions.

The major tenets of Orthodoxy, like those of traditional Judaism, include the dogma that the Torah was "given from Heaven," that the halakhah derives directly or indirectly from an act of revelation, and that Jews are obligated to live in accordance with the halakhah as interpreted by rabbinic authority.

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