Orthodox Judaism therefore advocates a strict observance of Jewish Law, or halakha, which is to be interpreted and determined only according to traditional methods and in adherence to the continuum of received precedent through the ages.

Practicing members are easily distinguishable by their lifestyle, refraining from doing numerous routine actions on the Sabbath and holidays, consuming only kosher food, praying thrice a day, studying the Torah often, donning head covering and tassels for men and modest clothing for women, and so forth.

In the mid-1980s, research on Orthodox Judaism became a scholarly discipline, examining how the need to confront modernity shaped and changed its beliefs, ideologies, social structure, and halakhic rulings, separating it from traditional Jewish society.

By the end of the 18th century, the weakened rabbinic establishment was facing a new kind of transgressor: they could not be classified as tolerable sinners overcome by their urges (khote le-te'avon), or as schismatics like the Sabbateans or Frankists, against whom sanctions were levied.

Reacting to Mendelssohn's assertion that freedom of conscience must replace communal censure, Rabbi Cohen of Hamburg commented: The very foundation of the Law and commandments rests on coercion, enabling to force obedience and punish the transgressor.

Sofer's response to the crisis of traditional Jewish society was unremitting conservatism, canonizing every detail of prevalent norms in the observant community lest any compromise legitimize the progressives' claim that the law was fluid or redundant.

Hungarian Jewry retained its pre-modern character well into the 19th century, allowing Sofer's disciples to establish a score of new yeshivas, at a time when these institutions were rapidly closing in the west, and a strong rabbinate to appoint them.

Bernays signified a new era, and historians marked him as the first modern rabbi, fitting the demands of emancipation: his contract forbade him to tax, punish, or coerce, and he lacked political or judiciary power.

While insisting on strict observance, the movement both tolerated and advocated modernization: Traditionally rare formal religious education for girls was introduced; modesty and gender separation were relaxed to match German society; men went clean-shaven and dressed like Gentiles; and exclusive Torah study virtually disappeared.

Influenced by the critical "Science of Judaism" (Wissenschaft des Judentums) pioneered by Leopold Zunz, and often in emulation of the Liberal Protestant milieu, they reexamined and undermined beliefs held as sacred in traditional circles, especially the notion of an unbroken chain from Sinai to the Sages.

The tone of the signatories varied considerably along geographic lines: letters from traditional societies in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire implored local leaders to petition the authorities and have them ban the movement.

[16][17] While Hildesheimer distinguished Frankel's observant disciples from Reform proponents, he wrote in his diary: how meager is the principal difference between the Breslau School, who don silk gloves at their work, and Geiger who wields a sledgehammer.

However, the Orthodox tolerated nonobservant Jews as long as they affiliated with the national committee: Adam Ferziger claimed that membership and loyalty, rather than beliefs and ritual behavior, emerged as the definitive manifestation of Jewish identity.

[5] In England, Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler's United Synagogue shared a similar approach: It was vehemently conservative in principle and combated ideological reformers, yet served a nonobservant public – as Todd Endelman noted, "While respectful of tradition, most English-born Jews were not orthodox in terms of personal practice.

[25] In the 1860s and 1870s, moderate maskilic rabbis like Yitzchak Yaacov Reines and Yechiel Michel Pines called for inclusion of secular studies in the heders and yeshivas, anticipating a communal disintegration as in the west.

In 1912, two German FVIOJ leaders, Isaac Breuer and Jacob Rosenheim, managed to organize a meeting of 300 seceding Mizrahi, proto-Haredi and secessionist Neo-Orthodox delegate in Katowice, creating the Agudath Israel party.

While the Germans were a tiny minority in comparison to the Eastern Europeans, their modern education made them a prominent elite in the new organization, which strove to provide a comprehensive response to world Jewry's challenges in a strictly observant spirit.

Many ultra-traditionalist elements in Eastern Europe, like the Belz and Lubavitch Hasidim, refused to join, viewing the movement as a dangerous innovation; and the organized Orthodox in Hungary rejected it as well, especially after it did not affirm a commitment to communal secession in 1923.

The October Revolution granted civil equality and imposed anti-religious persecutions, radically transforming Russian Jewry within a decade; the lifting of formal discrimination also strongly affected the Jews of independent Poland, Lithuania and other states.

The rationalist-philosophic school endeavored to present all commandments as serving higher moral and ethical purposes, while the mystical tradition, exemplified in Kabbalah, assigned each rite with a role in hidden dimensions of reality.

The refusal by rabbis to employ such tools, insisting on traditional methods and the need for consensus and continuity with past authorities, separates the most liberal-leaning Orthodox rabbinic circles from the most conservative non-Orthodox ones.

This plurality of opinion allows decisors, rabbis tasked with determining the legal stance in subjects without precedent, to weigh a range of options, based on methods derived from earlier authorities.

However, no later authority accepted it in its entirety (for example, Orthodox Jews wear phylacteries in a manner different from the one advocated there), and it was immediately contested or re-interpreted by various commentaries, most prominently the gloss written by Rabbi Moses Isserles named HaMapah ("The Tablecloth").

The authority to pass measures d'Rabanan is itself subject to debate – Maimonides stated that absolute obedience to rabbinic decrees is stipulated by the verse and thou shalt observe, while Nachmanides argued that such severity is unfounded, while accepting such enactments as binding, albeit less so than the divine commandments.

They range from the 2nd century BCE establishment of Hanukkah, to bypassing the Biblical ban on charging interest via the Prozbul, and up to the 1950 marital rules standardized by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, which forbade polygamy and levirate marriage even in communities that still practiced them.

While the reverence accorded to Minhag across rabbinic literature covers the extremes, including "a custom may uproot halakha" and wholly dismissive attitudes,[55] it was generally accepted as binding by scholars, and drew its power from popular adherence and routine.

[59] While Orthodox communities, especially the more conservative ones, have rabbis who technically fill this capacity, the public generally follows more broadly known authorities who are not limited by geography, and based on reverence and peer pressure more than coercion.

As in any other broad religious movement, an intrinsic tension connects the ideological and the sociological dimensions of Orthodox Judaism – while elites and intellectuals define adherence in theoretical terms, the masses use societal, familial, and institutional affiliation.

The prestige ascribed to them as centers of Torah study (after they were rebuilt in Israel and America, bearing the names of Eastern European yeshivas destroyed in the Holocaust) persuaded many who were not Misnagdic, and the term Litvak lost its original ethnic connotation.

[76][77] In the United States, the Modern Orthodox form a cohesive community, influenced by the legacy of leaders such as Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and concentrated around Yeshiva University and institutions such as the OU or National Council of Young Israel.