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The Shulchan Aruch, the Set Table, is the code of Jewish law Rabbi Joseph Karo composed in Safed and first printed in Venice in 1565, distilled from his own commentary on the earlier Arba'ah Turim. Four bodies in this atlas hold a variant, differently accounted stance toward it, and the four span the entire distance from treating it as binding law to holding no relationship to it whatsoever.

Consulted, Not Obeyed

Conservative Judaism consults the Shulchan Aruch as an authoritative reference, read through the movement's own halakhic process rather than treated as final in itself. Reconstructionist Judaism goes further from obedience: it holds the tradition as a civilization whose past has a vote and not a veto, so the code is consulted as the accumulated practice of the Jewish people rather than obeyed as law, a description that keeps the text in the room while removing its power to bind.

Authoritative in Its Own Edition, and Absent Entirely

Chabad-Lubavitch holds the opposite position from both: the Shulchan Aruch is authoritative, followed specifically in the Shulchan Aruch HaRav, Rabbi Shneur Zalman's own edition within the wider Shulchan Aruch tradition, obedience rather than consultation. Beta Israel stands entirely outside this whole spectrum of positions on the code, because its halakhah formed outside the rabbinic line altogether, before Karo's book existed to be received or refused; where the code and Beta Israel's own older practice differ, this atlas records that it is the older practice that has the claim. Four bodies, and not one of the four relates to the same sixteenth century book the same way.

Where To Read More

• Shulchan AruchRules and CodesThe code itself, held four genuinely different ways by four bodies
• Conservative JudaismJudaismConsulted as an authoritative reference, read through its own halakhic process
• Reconstructionist JudaismJudaismConsulted as the people's own accumulated practice, a vote and not a veto
• Chabad-LubavitchJudaismHeld as authoritative, followed in its own HaRav edition
• Beta IsraelJudaismHalakhah formed outside the rabbinic line before the code existed