Modern Orthodox Judaism

The principal professional association of Modern Orthodox rabbis in North America.

A current within Orthodox Judaism, defined by its posture towards secular society rather than by a distinct halakhic method.

Recited at the close of every service. Modern Orthodox prayer books retain the full traditional text, including the passage abridged in most non-Orthodox rites.

The standing prayer is the fixed centre of every service, said three times daily, and Modern Orthodoxy keeps it in the received text without abbreviation.

The cantorial tradition is retained, though Modern Orthodox congregations vary widely in how much of the service is given to a cantor and how much to congregational singing.

Modern Orthodoxy receives the Kabbalah as part of the tradition without teaching from it, leaning instead on the rationalist stream that runs from Maimonides.

Said at the close of sections of the service and by mourners, and its recitation requires a quorum, which is one of the practical points on which Modern Orthodoxy holds the traditional rule.

Head covering is kept as an obligation, and the knitted cap became the visible marker of the Modern Orthodox community in Israel and North America.

Chanted to open the Day of Atonement, and its cantorial setting is one of the few moments in the Orthodox year when the musical performance is itself the occasion.

Sung to welcome the sabbath on Friday evening, and one of the points at which congregational singing rather than recitation carries the service.

Modern Orthodox practice counts ten adult men, and the partnership minyan that gives women a larger role in the service does so without altering who is counted.

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

Modern Orthodoxy is distinguished from other Orthodox streams by its stance on secular education and on the State of Israel, not by liturgical revision, so it keeps the inherited prayer modes unchanged.

Held on the Orthodox terms, with a secular training alongside the rabbinic one, and the ordination of women remains outside its boundaries.

Hair covering for married women is held to be required and the form is left to the woman, so the wig, the scarf and the hat are all in use in the same congregation.

The shofar is sounded through the month before the New Year and at its two days, and Modern Orthodox practice follows the traditional sequence of blasts without alteration.

The Shulchan Aruch is held as the standard authoritative code of practical halakha.

Modern Orthodoxy holds the ban as binding law, and the Israeli rabbinate has extended its substance beyond the Ashkenazi communities it originally reached.

The Torah is chanted from the scroll to the received cantillation, and teaching a boy or, in many Modern Orthodox congregations, a girl to do so is a normal part of coming of age.

Modern Orthodoxy keeps the yeshiva while placing it alongside secular university study rather than in place of it.

A halakhic position that has gained ground since the nineteen nineties permits ascent, after immersion and barefoot, to areas held to lie outside the Temple precinct, against the ruling of the chief rabbinate.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Tzedakah is a duty of justice rather than an act of generosity, and the word does not mean charity.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. 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 Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The groom veils the bride before the ceremony.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The search for leaven is made by candlelight on the night before Passover eve.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Brit Milah is performed by a mohel on the eighth day, and the day is not moved for convenience.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Burial is in the earth, without embalming, ordinarily within a day.

Modern Orthodox synagogues retain the professional hazzan as shaliach tzibbur alongside the rabbi.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. 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, read together with this stream's positive engagement with the modern state of Israel and secular society.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The marriage is solemnised under the canopy.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. 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 Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Coming of age is a matter of obligation taking effect at a fixed age rather than of a ceremony conferring it.

The covenant is held as binding in full, alongside a positive engagement with secular learning and the modern state that this stream does not read as a compromise of it.

Creation from nothing is held, and the relation between that account and the findings of natural science is treated as a question to be worked at rather than a choice to be made.

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.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The public fasts of the calendar are kept, the two full fasts from sunset to nightfall and the four minor fasts from dawn.

Modern Orthodox synagogues use a gabbai to run Torah service logistics on the same model as Orthodox practice generally.

Acts of loving kindness are held as a standing obligation and are organised communally as well as individually.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. 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 Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Hakafot are made with the Torah scrolls on Simchat Torah.

Halakha is held divinely given and binding, combined distinctively with full participation in secular society, following the tradition of Samson Raphael Hirsch and Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Hoshanot are said with the four species on each day of Sukkot.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Kabbalat Shabbat opens the Sabbath on Friday evening.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. 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 Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Visiting the graves of parents and of the righteous is customary before the High Holy Days.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Betrothal and marriage, once separate by a year, are performed together under the canopy.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. A garment is torn by the mourners.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Maariv is prayed at night.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. 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.

Modern Orthodox institutions maintain kashrut supervision and, in yeshiva settings, the mashgiach ruchani.

The Masoretic Text is held as the authoritative Hebrew text of the Tanakh.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The dead are remembered at Yizkor on four days of the year.

A personal Messiah is awaited literally, the shared Orthodox position.

Midrashic literature is held as authoritative rabbinic interpretation of scripture.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Immersion is required for conversion, for family purity, and for vessels bought from a non-Jew.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. 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.

The commandments are held as fully binding, and the engagement with the wider world is argued from within that obligation rather than against it.

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.

Brain-stem death is death, which is the basis on which observant organ donation proceeds in Israel.