Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Denominations

Haredi Judaism

Also Known As Haredim · Haredi The usual name for the strictly observant world this entry covers, from a Hebrew word for one who trembles at the divine word. · Haredi / Hasidic Judaism Retired display name, kept as a findable alias after the split. · Ultra-Orthodox Judaism Common English rendering of Haredi.
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Origin from 1800

The most strictly traditional stream of Orthodox Judaism, often called ultra-Orthodox, seeking to live wholly by Torah and to keep apart from secular culture in dress, language, schooling, and community, under the authority of leading rabbis and heads of yeshivas. Three broad streams sit within it. The Litvish or Yeshivish world descends from the Lithuanian yeshiva movement and its emphasis on rigorous Talmud study, historically the Mitnagdim who resisted Hasidism. Hasidism itself, treated in full as its own denomination in this atlas, gathers the faithful around a hereditary spiritual master, the rebbe or tzaddik, in courts such as Chabad, Satmar, and Ger. Sephardic Haredi Judaism, led in Israel chiefly by the Shas movement, applies the same rigor to Sephardic and Mizrahi custom and law. The three streams differ in leadership, custom, and language, but converge on Torah authority, strict gender separation, and deliberate distance from secular modern life, which is what the umbrella term Haredi describes.

Facts
History
Separation or Divergence
The breach largely closed in the nineteenth century in common opposition to Reform and to secularisation 1
Separation or Divergence
The Mitnagdim, the rabbinic opponents who placed Hasidim under ban from 1772, "Mitnagdim" being a name given by the dispute rather than one either party chose 1
Date of Separation
1772 to 1815 1
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Halakha binding and not subject to historical revision 1Tradition: Judaism
Defining Doctrinal Position
The tzaddik or rebbe as spiritual intermediary and head of the community 1Tradition: Judaism
Position on Sexuality
Same-sex sexual relationships are held contrary to teaching; LGBT individuals are welcomed as members but not ordained, and same-sex unions are not blessed 2
Sourced to the subject's own accountAgudath Israel of America, the leading Haredi Jewish umbrella organization in the United States, stated on 26 June 2015 that the Torah, which forbids homosexual activity, sanctions only the union of a man and a woman in matrimony, the same core teaching Orthodox Judaism holds generally, restated here by the organization most identified with the Haredi world specifically. Neither source read addresses ordinary synagogue or community membership for a gay Haredi Jew directly; the statement affirms that its opposition does not question anyone's inherent human dignity.
Sexuality Position Detail
Agudath Israel of America, the leading Haredi Jewish umbrella organization in the United States, stated on its own site on 26 June 2015, responding to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, that the Torah, which forbids homosexual activity, sanctions only the union of a man and a woman in matrimony. The statement restates the same core teaching Orthodox Judaism holds generally, here from the organization most identified with the Haredi world specifically, and it explicitly affirms that its opposition does not question anyone's inherent human dignity. No source found addresses ordinary synagogue or community membership for a gay Haredi Jew directly, one way or the other. 3
Practice
Liturgical Language
Hebrew 1
Liturgical Language
Aramaic 1
Practice StatusSourced to the subject's own account
Haredi religious law, custom and teaching are extensively documented, both by Haredi authors and by outside scholars, and Haredi communities, while socially insular in some respects, do not hold a closed body of religious teaching back from outside description. 4
Origins
Origin Period
from 1800 1
Its own record states the wider Haredi world "takes its modern shape in nineteenth-century central and eastern Europe."
Origin Period
The wider Haredi world takes its modern shape in nineteenth-century central and eastern Europe 1
Place of Origin
Central and eastern Europe. 1
Founder
No single founder. A modern umbrella term gathering three older streams, the Lithuanian Mitnagdic yeshiva movement, Hasidism and Sephardic Haredi Judaism, rather than a movement traced to one founding figure. 1
Organisation
Governance
Authority in trained scholars, with no central office 1
The non-Hasidic Haredi world is led instead by heads of yeshivot
Ordination
Restricted to men 1
Giving
Standing Giving Expectation
Haredi communities give maaser kesafim a more institutionally embedded role than the dues-based synagogue-membership model that describes Orthodox Judaism's own practice. The customary baseline is the same widely practiced norm recorded at the religion level for Judaism generally, one tenth of income to charitable causes, itself debated among halachic authorities as custom rather than binding law. A further fifth, chomesh, is praised by some halachic writers as a generous, praiseworthy level beyond that baseline tenth. The Talmud itself gives that same fifth a different meaning: in Ketubot 50a, the Sages of Usha enacted a fifth as a ceiling rather than a goal, ruling that a giver should not distribute more than that share, out of concern that unchecked generosity could impoverish the giver and turn them into someone the community must then support. Halachic guidance also sanctions directing charitable money specifically toward Torah study: a donation to a Torah institution itself counts as a distribution to the poor, and maaser funds are preferably earmarked that way. This lines up with how Haredi communal life is actually organized, where, unlike the wider Orthodox world, many men continue full-time Torah study in a kollel after marriage rather than taking outside employment, so a household's tzedakah and its community's Torah-study institutions are bound together in a way an ordinary synagogue membership due is not. 5 6 7
Standard Rate Expected
Ten percent. 5
How the Expectation Is Enforced
Codified Obligation, Ruled Unenforceable 5
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 1
Trajectory
Membership Over Time
According to the Pew Research Center's 2013 Survey of U.S. Jews, sixty two percent of American Orthodox Jews identified as Haredi (sometimes called ultra-Orthodox), against thirty one percent identifying as Modern Orthodox, out of an estimated 5.3 million Jewish adults in the United States of whom about ten percent were Orthodox. 8
Membership Over Time
The Institute for Jewish Policy Research estimated in 2022 that about 2.1 million Haredi Jews lived worldwide, roughly fourteen percent of the global Jewish population, with Israel and the United States together accounting for about ninety two percent of that total. 9
Membership Figure As Of
2013-01-01 8
Membership Figure As Of
2022-05-03 9
Basis of the Membership Figure
Independent Survey 8
Basis of the Membership Figure
Scholarly or Demographic Estimate 9
Disputed
State Funding Mechanism
Israel: state-funded exemption from military conscription for full-time yeshiva students, traced to Ben-Gurion's 1948 arrangement, repeatedly struck down by Israel's courts (1998, 2012, 2024) and never yet replaced by a law the courts have let stand 10
Whether Israel's decades-long arrangement funding and exempting full-time Haredi yeshiva students from military conscription is a settled state policy or an unresolved constitutional violation is itself the live dispute. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion agreed informally in 1948 to exempt a small number of yeshiva students under a policy later known as Torato Umanuto, his Torah is his occupation, administered for decades through ministerial discretion; Israel's High Court of Justice ruled in 1998 that this had no proper legislative basis and ordered the Knesset to legislate, which it did in 2002 with the Tal Law, which the Supreme Court then struck down as unconstitutional in 2012 for violating the principle of equal civic burden, and the arrangement remained contested until the Supreme Court ruled again in June 2024 that the government could no longer fund yeshivas for draft-age students who had not enlisted, a ruling the Knesset has not yet settled with legislation the courts have accepted, so the mechanism recorded here describes a funding and exemption practice still being actively relitigated rather than a stable state policy.
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Two Movements That Fought Each Other, Then Merged

The Haredi world contains two currents that spent the eighteenth century in bitter conflict with each other and now stand together against modernity. The history explains a good deal about the internal texture.

Hasidism began in the Ukrainian and Polish borderlands around Israel ben Eliezer, called the Baal Shem Tov, who died in 1760. It was a popular revival, drawing on Kabbalah and offering ordinary Jews without Talmudic learning a way to serve God through joy, fervour, song and attachment in prayer, and it gathered around a charismatic tzaddik or rebbe, a righteous man whose blessing, table and person mediated the divine to his followers. The court, the dynasty and the hereditary succession all follow from that.

The Mitnagdim, the opponents, formed around the Vilna Gaon, who issued bans of excommunication against the Hasidim in 1772 and after. Their objections were serious: that a movement organised around a man was idolatrous in tendency, that it disparaged Talmudic learning, and that its ecstatic practice was undisciplined. Their answer was the modern yeshiva, Volozhin, founded in 1803, and its descendants, built on rigorous, full-time, lifelong Talmud study as the highest form of service.

The two settled into coexistence during the nineteenth century, when both concluded that the real threat was the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, and the secularisation that followed it. The word Haredi, from a biblical phrase meaning those who tremble at God's word, now covers both, and the Yiddish-speaking world it describes was substantially destroyed in the Holocaust and rebuilt from remnants in Israel, New York, London and Antwerp with striking speed.

Courts, Yeshivas, and How Authority Actually Runs

There is no Haredi hierarchy, and yet Haredi communities are among the most tightly governed religious societies in the world. The mechanism is personal authority backed by total institutional coverage.

In the Hasidic world the unit is the court, named for the eastern European town where the dynasty began, Satmar, Ger, Belz, Vizhnitz, Bobov, Skver, Chabad-Lubavitch and dozens more. Each is led by a rebbe, usually succeeded by a son or son-in-law, and each maintains its own synagogues, schools, ritual baths, courts, charities and often its own neighbourhood. Followers consult the rebbe on matters far beyond ritual, marriage, business, medical decisions, and the relationship is the defining feature of Hasidic life. Chabad is the conspicuous exception to the whole pattern: it turned outward, sending emissary couples to establish centres worldwide serving unaffiliated Jews, and it has had no rebbe since 1994, a situation the movement has not resolved and does not intend to.

In the Lithuanian or yeshivish world the centre is the yeshiva and the authority is the gadol, an outstanding scholar whose rulings are accepted across communities without any formal office at all.

Practically, authority is enforced by the completeness of the environment: schooling, marriage brokerage, employment, kosher supervision, housing and burial all run through communal institutions, and separation from the outside is maintained by Yiddish, by dress that identifies dynasty and status precisely, by restrictions on internet and secular media, and by strict segregation of the sexes outside the family.

The disputes are real and are conducted fiercely. Chief among them is Zionism: parts of the Haredi world, Satmar most prominently, reject the State of Israel on theological grounds, while others participate in its politics through Haredi parties that have held the balance of power in Israeli coalitions for decades.

Where It Is Now

The Haredi world is the fastest-growing part of the Jewish people, and the arithmetic is straightforward: total fertility in Haredi communities has long run at roughly three times the surrounding average, and retention is high.

Israel's Haredi population is around thirteen per cent of the population and rising steadily; official Israeli projections have it approaching a quarter within a generation. The other large concentrations are in New York and its satellite towns, notably Kiryas Joel and New Square, and in London's Stamford Hill, Montreal, Antwerp and Melbourne. Yiddish, written off as a dying language in the 1960s, has more native speakers under twenty than it has had in decades because of this growth.

Two pressures dominate current Haredi life, and both are matters of public record. The first is economic. Large families, extended full-time Talmud study for men, and limited secular curriculum in boys' schools together produce very high poverty rates; in most Haredi households women are the principal earners. Arguments over the secular content of state-funded Haredi schooling have reached the courts in New York and Britain. The second is military service. The Israeli exemption for full-time yeshiva students, granted at the state's founding to a few hundred men, now covers tens of thousands; the Israeli Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled the arrangement unlawful, and successive governments have fallen or nearly fallen over attempts to legislate around it. Since 2023 the issue has become acute.

Internally, the world has also faced sustained scrutiny over the handling of child sexual abuse, where the traditional prohibition on informing to secular authorities has been publicly challenged by survivors and by some rabbinic authorities, and over the treatment of those who leave, who describe the loss of family, language and qualifications as close to total.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Haredi Judaism directly: "Wikipedia's article on Haredi Judaism, noting that many Haredi men continue full-time Torah study in a kollel after marriage rather than entering outside employment."

Source Haredi Judaism (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

This source names Haredi Judaism directly: "Wikipedia's article on Haredi Judaism, a continuously edited tertiary source with no fixed publication year, accessed 2026-08-20."

Source Wikipedia, Haredi Judaism (source)Wikipedia contributors

Belongs to Tradition

Judaism, Religions

Branch Of

Judaism, Religions

Contains

Hasidic Jewry is one part of what is now called Haredi Judaism; the Lithuanian Misnagdic world is the other, and the two were formed by opposing each other.

Source The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern EuropeGershon David Hundert (ed.)

Holds Element

Said three times daily at full length and in Hebrew, with the fixed order treated as settled and not open to revision.

Haredi courts hold the strictest standing in matters of personal status, and their conversions are the ones most widely accepted elsewhere.

Gabriel, Archangels

Haredi practice keeps the bedtime angelic formula in which Gabriel stands at the left hand.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Meron, Sacred Sites

The pilgrimage is kept across the Haredi world and the first haircut of three-year-old boys is performed at the tomb during it.

Michael, Archangels

Haredi practice keeps the full angelic liturgy of the traditional siddur, including the bedtime invocation of the four archangels and the Sabbath hymn welcoming the ministering angels.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Haredi communities keep the requirement of ten adult men strictly, and the availability of a quorum shapes where families are able to live.

Maimonides' Mishneh Torah is held as an authoritative code of Jewish law.

Source Mishneh TorahMoses Maimonides

Held, with the yeshiva head rather than the congregational rabbi as the central figure of authority.

Raphael, Archangels

Haredi practice keeps the bedtime formula in which Raphael stands behind the one lying down.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

The Shulchan Aruch is held as the standard authoritative code of practical halakha, followed with particular strictness.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Worn from early childhood, and in many Haredi communities with the fringes left out over the trousers so that the commandment is visible.

Laid daily from the age of thirteen, and the standards applied to the scribal work and to the boxes themselves are the strictest in use.

The Vilna Gaon taught in the city, and the Lithuanian yeshiva world that shapes Haredi study descends from him and from the school he formed.

Haredi practice treats the ban as binding law within the Ashkenazi world it governs.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Haredi authorities forbid ascent without exception and have restated the prohibition repeatedly against those who permit it, treating the question as closed rather than open.

Haredi authorities hold the arrangement at the plaza to be the only permissible one and have opposed every proposal to alter it.

Hair covering is universal for married women and the standard applied is stricter than elsewhere in Orthodox practice.

Uriel, Archangels

Haredi practice keeps the bedtime formula in which Uriel stands before the one lying down.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

The Lithuanian yeshiva world is the institutional centre of Haredi life, and full-time study in a kollel after marriage is a normal expectation rather than an exception.

Critiqued Here

Hazzanut (Cantorial Chant), Sacred Sound

Elaborate cantorial singing is regarded with suspicion where it lengthens the service for the sake of a voice. Many Haredi congregations prefer a brisk unadorned prayer led by any competent man, without refusing the art itself.

Tzadik, Religious Roles & Titles

The Lithuanian yeshiva world descends from the opponents of Hasidism, who argued that the doctrine of the tzadik put a man between the Jew and God and displaced the study of Torah as the centre of religious life. The quarrel has softened and the criticism has not been withdrawn.

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Tzedakah is a duty of justice rather than an act of generosity, and the word does not mean charity.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. 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.

Bedeken, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The groom veils the bride before the ceremony.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The search for leaven is made by candlelight on the night before Passover eve.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Brit Milah is performed by a mohel on the eighth day, and the day is not moved for convenience.

Burial, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Burial is in the earth, without embalming, ordinarily within a day.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Chalitzah, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Chalitzah is performed where a man dies childless and his brother declines to marry the widow, and it is what releases her to remarry.

Chosenness, Doctrines

Israel's election is affirmed in its classical form, underwriting this stream's deliberate separation from the surrounding secular culture.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Chuppah, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The marriage is solemnised under the canopy.

Haredi and Hasidic communities keep the eighth-day circumcision with a large celebration, and some Hasidic groups retain metzitzah b'peh, oral suction of the wound, which public health authorities have sought to restrict.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Coming of age is a matter of obligation taking effect at a fixed age rather than of a ceremony conferring it.

Covenant, Doctrines

The covenant is read as binding without qualification, and the refusal to reinterpret its obligations for the modern world is the defining commitment of this stream.

Creation from nothing by divine will is held in its traditional form, and the account is read as history.

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.

Source Shulchan AruchJoseph Karo
Fasting, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The public fasts of the calendar are kept, the two full fasts from sunset to nightfall and the four minor fasts from dawn.

Haredi and Hasidic synagogues use a gabbai, often a figure of real standing in the community beyond the liturgical function.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Acts of loving kindness are held as a standing obligation, and this stream sustains a dense network of mutual aid institutions on that basis.

Giyur, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Conversion requires acceptance of the commandments before a rabbinic court, circumcision where applicable, and immersion, and conversions performed outside this body are not recognised.

Hakafot, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Hakafot are made with the Torah scrolls on Simchat Torah.

Halakha, Doctrines

Halakha is held divinely given and binding in full detail, observed with particular strictness under the authority of leading rabbis and yeshiva heads.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Hashkiveinu, Prayers
Hoshanot, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Hoshanot are said with the four species on each day of Sukkot.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Kabbalat Shabbat opens the Sabbath on Friday evening.

Haredi and Hasidic households take the strictest available position at each point, using only the supervisions their own community accepts, keeping glatt meat and often shmura matzah, and treating a lesser certification as none at all.

Source The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)Anonymous (multiple authors)
Kever Avot, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Visiting the graves of parents and of the righteous is customary before the High Holy Days.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Betrothal and marriage, once separate by a year, are performed together under the canopy.

Kriah, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. A garment is torn by the mourners.

Maariv, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Maariv is prayed at night.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. 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.

Haredi kashrut certification networks and Lithuanian-style yeshivos are where both senses of the mashgiach office are most institutionally developed.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The dead are remembered at Yizkor on four days of the year.

Meron, Sacred Sites

The Lag BaOmer gathering at the tomb ascribed to Shimon bar Yochai draws Hasidic and Sephardi pilgrims in very large numbers.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Messiah, Doctrines

A personal Messiah is awaited literally, the classical Orthodox position this stream shares with Modern Orthodoxy.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Midrashic literature is held as authoritative rabbinic interpretation of scripture.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Immersion is required for conversion, for family purity, and for vessels bought from a non-Jew.

Mincha, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Mincha is prayed in the afternoon.

The Mishnah is held as authoritative rabbinic tradition reaching back to Sinai.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Maimonides' Mishneh Torah is held as an authoritative code of Jewish law.

Source Mishneh TorahMoses Maimonides
Mitzvah, Doctrines

The commandments are held as divine obligations in their fullest traditional extent, with stringency preferred to leniency where authorities differ.

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.

Source Shulchan AruchJoseph Karo

Haredi and Hasidic communities use certified mohelim, frequently a hereditary or long-apprenticed specialty within a family.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Musaf, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. 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 Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Mussar, the disciplined work on character, entered the yeshiva world in the nineteenth century and is taught in many of them.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. A boy is named at his circumcision, a girl at a Torah reading.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Hands are washed with a vessel on rising and before eating bread.

Niddah, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. 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 Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Nusach Ashkenaz is used in the congregations of this body descended from the communities of the Rhineland and eastern Europe.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Nusach Edot HaMizrach is used in the Sephardi and Mizrahi congregations of this body.

Nusach Sefard, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Nusach Sefard is used in the Hasidic congregations of this body.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Haredi and Hasidic households keep the thirty-nine categories at their strictest and add the customs of the court, a tish at the rebbe's table and a third meal at dusk with singing, alongside a deliberate separation from the surrounding week.

Source The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)Anonymous (multiple authors)
Omnipotence, Doctrines

God is addressed as almighty in the received liturgy, kept here in its traditional form.

The Oral Torah in its entirety is held as revealed at Sinai and equally binding with the Written Torah.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Oseh Shalom, Prayers

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The Seder is conducted from the Haggadah in full, with the four cups and the four questions.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Pesukei Dezimra opens the morning service.

Pidyon Haben, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. 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.

Pilgrimage, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. 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.

Haredi Judaism follows the individual-posek model, with the most respected living poskim of a generation carrying broad authority (a daas Torah figure) beyond their own community.

Source Shulchan AruchJoseph Karo
Prayer, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Prayer is obligatory, fixed in text and in time, and the obligation falls on men three times daily.

Prophecy, Doctrines

Prophecy is held as real, closed, and preserved in the written record, with no continuing prophetic office.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The Purim play is a licensed annual reversal, and in the yeshivot it is turned on the institution itself.

Haredi Judaism ordains rabbis through yeshiva semicha and does not ordain women.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Haredi communities give the rebbetzin significant informal standing, often running the practical side of communal institutions.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Redemption, Doctrines

Redemption is held as a future divine act, and for much of this stream it is the reason the present political restoration is not mistaken for it.

Religious anti-Zionism, holding that a Jewish state before the Messiah's coming oversteps human authority, has been the position of significant Hasidic and Haredi authorities within this stream.

Bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed literally.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The Omer is counted aloud, with a blessing, on each of the forty-nine nights.

Selichot, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Selichot are said in the penitential season and on the fast days.

Shabbat, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The Sabbath as a day of prescribed rest, prayer and meals is the frame the whole week is built on.

Shacharit, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Shacharit is prayed daily, ordinarily with a quorum of ten, with tefillin on weekdays.

Shema Yisrael, Prayers
Shemira, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The body is watched continuously from death until burial.

Sheva Brachot, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The seven blessings are said under the canopy and repeated at meals through the following week.

Shiva, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Seven days of mourning are kept at home, the mourners seated low and not going out.

Shloshim, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. 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.

Source Shulchan AruchJoseph Karo

The Shulchan Aruch is held as the standard authoritative code of practical halakha, followed with particular strictness.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

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.

Source Shulchan AruchJoseph Karo

Haredi and Hasidic communities require sofer-written ritual objects to the strict halakhic standard, and Hasidic courts often maintain their own soferim.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Scribal work on Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzot is done to the received halakhic standards, and a scroll that fails them is not used.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Tahara, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The body is washed and purified by the burial society before dressing.

The Talmud is held as authoritative and binding, studied intensively as the center of traditional yeshiva learning.

Source The Babylonian TalmudAnonymous (multiple authors)

The Tanakh is held as divinely revealed scripture.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Teshuvah, Doctrines

Repentance is held in its full traditional form, with the season of return kept at the length and intensity the classical sources set.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Tithing, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. 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.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Affirmed in its strictest classical form, written and oral Torah alike dictated at Sinai, foundational to this stream's separation from modern reinterpretation.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Upsherin, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. A boy's first haircut is delayed to his third birthday.

Yahrzeit, Practices

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The Yahrzeit is kept with Kaddish and a lamp on the anniversary of a death.

Yichud, Rituals

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The couple withdraw alone after the ceremony, which completes the marriage in halakhah.

Yizkor, Prayers

Originates in Language

Aramaic, Languages
Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Hebrew, Languages
Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Position On

Death requires the cessation of heartbeat and respiration, so brain-stem criteria are not sufficient.

Halakha, Doctrines

Halakha as binding, with the stringent ruling preferred and the authority of the great scholars of the generation decisive.

Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition
Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Macmillan Reference USA, 2007s.v. Hasidism; HaredimView the Source
2. Statement on the Supreme Court's Ruling Regarding Same Sex Marriage (Agudath Israel of America)
Agudath Israel of America, 2015the stated position on sexuality and its supporting detailthe holders' own accountView the Source
3. Statement From Agudath Israel of America on the Supreme Court Ruling Regarding Same Gender Marriage (The Yeshiva World)
The Yeshiva World, 2015Statement body
Quote, Statement body
The Torah, which forbids homosexual activity, sanctions only the union of a man and a woman in matrimony.
View the Source
4. Wikipedia, Haredi Judaism (source)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia
5. Maaser Kesafim (RabbiKaganoff.com)
RabbiKaganoff.comView the Source
6. Haredi Judaism (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia
7. Ketubot 50a (Sefaria, William Davidson Talmud Translation)
Sefaria
8. A Portrait of American Orthodox Jews
Pew Research Center, 2015View the Source
9. Staetsky, Haredi Jews around the world: Population Trends and Estimates (JPR, 2022)
L. Daniel Staetsky, Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), 2022Report findings
Quote, Report findings
The global Haredi population is estimated at 2,100,000, constituting about 14% of the total Jewish population in the world.
View the Source
10. International Religious Freedom Report
United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source
Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba'al Shem Tov
Moshe Rosman, University of California Press, 1996
Shulchan Aruch
Joseph Karo, 1565Page description
Quote, Page description
The most widely accepted code of Jewish law ever written.
View the Source
Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination, 1889-1985
Pamela S. Nadell, Beacon Press, 1998View the Source
Mishneh Torah
Moses MaimonidesView the Source
Tanya (Likkutei Amarim)
Shneur Zalman of Liady, 1797Chapters 1 to 12
Quote, Chapters 1 to 12
The Chabad account of the two souls, and the Hasidic teaching that God is served with joy.
View the Source
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