Chabad-Lubavitch

Chabad-Lubavitch is a Hasidic court, contained within Hasidic Judaism specifically rather than the broader Haredi umbrella.

Chabad men fasten the belt for prayer as other Hasidim do, though the movement does not keep the fur hat that marks most of the courts.

Chabad is named for the three highest of the sephirot, and its founding work sets out a Kabbalistic psychology as a practical discipline for ordinary people.

Chabad teaching treats Metatron as a real order of being within the Lurianic scheme its own literature works from.

Chabad keeps the angelic texts of the traditional liturgy and reads them through the Lurianic frame set out in the movement's own writings.

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

Chabad has catalogued and published its niggunim and teaches particular melodies with named origins, which is why its repertory is the one most often heard outside Hasidism.

Chabad teaching uses gematria freely as an interpretive method within its Kabbalistic frame.

Chabad keeps Raziel within the wider angelic scheme its Kabbalistic literature inherits.

Chabad receives Sandalphon among the angels of the talmudic and Kabbalistic tradition.

The public phylactery campaign, begun in 1967, made the laying of them by any Jewish man the movement's most visible outreach and its most recognisable street practice.

Held, and the seventh rebbe of this dynasty, who died in 1994, has had no successor, so the office is held by a man no longer living.

Chabad maintains its own network of yeshivas whose curriculum places Hasidic texts alongside the Talmud.

Chabad prays Nusach Ari, the recension the movement's founder compiled from the Lurianic sources, which differs in wording from the Nusach Sefard of the other Hasidic courts.

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.

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.

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.