Non-Hasidic Approaches to Halakhah

Rabbi Mintz on Jewish History - Glimpses into the religious Lives of Early Modern European Jewry

The end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought many modernizations to the Jewish comunities of Eastern Europe. How did the halakhic works address these innovations and cahnges in reality? This lecture will explore the approaches of Arukh Ha-Shulhan and Mishneh Brurah to halakhic codification during this period. The works focused on the changes in society as well as the fact that halakhah was no longer only the property of the rabbinic elite. These two codes set the stage for the contemporary attitude towards halakhah.