Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Tzedakah is a duty of justice rather than an act of generosity, and the word does not mean charity.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. A boy becomes obligated at thirteen and reads from the Torah. A girl becomes obligated at twelve, and the manner in which that is publicly marked varies widely across this body and is not a Torah reading.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The groom veils the bride before the ceremony.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The search for leaven is made by candlelight on the night before Passover eve.
Bittul, self-nullification before God, is central to this stream's theology, developed at length in the Tanya's account of the intellectual faculties chochmah, binah and daat.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Brit Milah is performed by a mohel on the eighth day, and the day is not moved for convenience.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Burial is in the earth, without embalming, ordinarily within a day.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Chalitzah is performed where a man dies childless and his brother declines to marry the widow, and it is what releases her to remarry.
Israel's election is affirmed in classical form, underwriting this stream's mission of outreach to other Jews wherever they live.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The marriage is solemnised under the canopy.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Orthodox practice holds brit milah on the eighth day without exception unless the child's health forbids, performed by a trained mohel with blessings and the naming, and the day is not deferred for the Sabbath or a festival.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Coming of age is a matter of obligation taking effect at a fixed age rather than of a ceremony conferring it.
A wordless meditative melody composed by Chabad-Lubavitch's own founding Rebbe, sung only on the movement's own especially significant occasions and understood within the community as a primary form of spiritual communication.
The judge of a rabbinical court sits under the law of the Shulchan Aruch's Choshen Mishpat, which governs the constitution of a beit din, the competence required of those who sit on it and the procedure it follows.
Devekut, cleaving to God, is cultivated through the contemplative discipline of this stream's own system, set out in the Tanya.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The public fasts of the calendar are kept, the two full fasts from sunset to nightfall and the four minor fasts from dawn.
Giyur, Rituals Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Conversion requires acceptance of the commandments before a rabbinic court, circumcision where applicable, and immersion, and conversions performed outside this body are not recognised.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Hakafot are made with the Torah scrolls on Simchat Torah.
Halakha is held divinely given and binding, the shared Orthodox floor beneath this stream's distinctive contemplative and outreach emphasis.
Hitbonenut, sustained analytical meditation on a concept until it moves the emotions, is the discipline the Tanya sets out and it is what distinguishes this body's inner life.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Hoshanot are said with the four species on each day of Sukkot.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Kabbalat Shabbat opens the Sabbath on Friday evening.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Orthodox observance keeps the full detail: separate dishes and sinks for meat and dairy, a waiting period after meat before dairy, reliance on recognised rabbinic supervision for processed food, and separate arrangements for Passover.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Visiting the graves of parents and of the righteous is customary before the High Holy Days.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Betrothal and marriage, once separate by a year, are performed together under the canopy.
Kriah, Rituals Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. A garment is torn by the mourners.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Maariv is prayed at night.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Marriage is contracted by the giving of an object of value in the presence of two witnesses, and it is followed by the seven blessings.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The dead are remembered at Yizkor on four days of the year.
Why this is disputed. A personal Messiah is awaited; the messianic status of this stream's seventh rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, remains contested within the movement and beyond it. A minority faction, generally called meshichists, holds he was or remains the Messiah even after his 1994 death, a position the movement's mainstream leadership and most other Orthodox Jewish authorities have publicly rejected as a departure from normative belief.
Midrashic literature is held as authoritative rabbinic interpretation of scripture.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Immersion is required for conversion, for family purity, and for vessels bought from a non-Jew.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Mincha is prayed in the afternoon.
The Mishnah is held as authoritative rabbinic tradition reaching back to Sinai.
Maimonides' Mishneh Torah is held as an authoritative code of Jewish law.
Circumcision and the fitness of the one who performs it are governed by the Shulchan Aruch's Yoreh De'ah, which fixes the rite, its timing and the conditions under which it may be deferred.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Musaf is prayed on Sabbaths, new moons and festivals, and it asks in plain words for the restoration of the Temple and its offerings.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Mussar, the disciplined work on character, entered the yeshiva world in the nineteenth century and is taught in many of them.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. A boy is named at his circumcision, a girl at a Torah reading.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Hands are washed with a vessel on rising and before eating bread.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The laws of family purity are kept, with immersion in a mikveh at their conclusion, and they are among the observances that most distinguish this body in practice.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Nusach Sefard is used in the Hasidic congregations of this body.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Orthodox observance keeps the full thirty-nine categories of forbidden work, so no writing, cooking, carrying outside an eruv, or use of electricity, with timers set beforehand, and the day given to synagogue, meals, study and rest.
The Oral Torah in its entirety is held as revealed at Sinai and equally binding with the Written Torah.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The Seder is conducted from the Haggadah in full, with the four cups and the four questions.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Pesukei Dezimra opens the morning service.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. A firstborn son of a mother is redeemed from a kohen on the thirty-first day, unless the father is a kohen or a levi.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Pilgrimage to the Western Wall and to the graves of the righteous stands in place of the three pilgrim festivals that required attendance at a Temple that no longer stands.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Prayer is obligatory, fixed in text and in time, and the obligation falls on men three times daily.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The Purim play is a licensed annual reversal, and in the yeshivot it is turned on the institution itself.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The Omer is counted aloud, with a blessing, on each of the forty-nine nights.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Selichot are said in the penitential season and on the fast days.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The Sabbath as a day of prescribed rest, prayer and meals is the frame the whole week is built on.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Shacharit is prayed daily, ordinarily with a quorum of ten, with tefillin on weekdays.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The body is watched continuously from death until burial.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The seven blessings are said under the canopy and repeated at meals through the following week.
Shiva, Rituals Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Seven days of mourning are kept at home, the mourners seated low and not going out.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Thirty days of lesser mourning follow the seven.
The slaughterer's qualification and practice are governed in detail by the Shulchan Aruch's Yoreh De'ah, which sets both the law of shechitah and the requirement that a shochet be examined and licensed before he may act for a community.
The Shulchan Aruch is held as authoritative; this stream follows the Shulchan Aruch HaRav, Shneur Zalman's own edition, within the wider Shulchan Aruch tradition.
The scribe's work is governed by the Shulchan Aruch's Yoreh De'ah, which sets the law for the writing of Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzot, down to the forming of the letters and the intention required while writing the divine name.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Scribal work on Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzot is done to the received halakhic standards, and a scroll that fails them is not used.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The body is washed and purified by the burial society before dressing.
The Talmud is held as authoritative and binding, the shared Orthodox floor of this stream's legal observance.
The Tanakh is held as divinely revealed scripture.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Maaser, the tenth, is given from income, and the practice survived the loss of the agricultural tithes it began as.
The Torah is held as verbatim divine revelation given at Sinai.
Affirmed in the classical Orthodox form, elaborated in Shneur Zalman of Liadi's Tanya through the Lurianic Kabbalah that grounds this stream's theology.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. A boy's first haircut is delayed to his third birthday.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The Yahrzeit is kept with Kaddish and a lamp on the anniversary of a death.
Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The couple withdraw alone after the ceremony, which completes the marriage in halakhah.