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.

Modern Orthodox communities use certified mohelim on the same halakhic basis as Orthodox practice generally.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. 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 Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Mussar, the disciplined work on character, entered the yeshiva world in the nineteenth century and is taught in many of them.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. A boy is named at his circumcision, a girl at a Torah reading.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Hands are washed with a vessel on rising and before eating bread.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. 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 Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Nusach Ashkenaz is used in the congregations of this body descended from the communities of the Rhineland and eastern Europe.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Nusach Edot HaMizrach is used in the Sephardi and Mizrahi congregations of this body.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Nusach Sefard is used in the Hasidic congregations of this body.

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

God is addressed as almighty in the received liturgy, which this stream retains in full.

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

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The Seder is conducted from the Haggadah in full, with the four cups and the four questions.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Pesukei Dezimra opens the morning service.

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

Modern Orthodox Judaism follows the same individual-posek model as Orthodox practice generally, often looking to poskim engaged with contemporary questions.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Prayer is obligatory, fixed in text and in time, and the obligation falls on men three times daily.

Prophecy is held as real and closed, and the prophetic books are read as scripture rather than as historical literature.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The Purim play is a licensed annual reversal, and in the yeshivot it is turned on the institution itself.

Modern Orthodox Judaism ordains rabbis through the same semicha process as Orthodox Judaism generally; some Modern Orthodox institutions train women as communal scholars under other titles, a contested development, but the mainstream movement does not ordain women as rabbis.

Modern Orthodox communities recognize the rebbetzin's informal communal role alongside her husband's pulpit.

Redemption is held as a future divine act, and in this stream the modern return to the land is often read as its beginning.

Religious Zionism, reading the State of Israel in positive religious terms, has been the characteristic Modern Orthodox posture since Samson Raphael Hirsch and, in America, Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

Bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed literally.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The Omer is counted aloud, with a blessing, on each of the forty-nine nights.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Selichot are said in the penitential season and on the fast days.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The Sabbath as a day of prescribed rest, prayer and meals is the frame the whole week is built on.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Shacharit is prayed daily, ordinarily with a quorum of ten, with tefillin on weekdays.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The body is watched continuously from death until burial.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The seven blessings are said under the canopy and repeated at meals through the following week.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Seven days of mourning are kept at home, the mourners seated low and not going out.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. 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 the standard authoritative code of practical halakha.

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.

Modern Orthodox communities hold Torah scrolls and tefillin to the same sofer-written halakhic standard as Orthodox practice generally.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. 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 Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The body is washed and purified by the burial society before dressing.

The Talmud is held as authoritative and binding alongside this stream's engagement with secular scholarship.

The Tanakh is held as divinely revealed scripture.

Repentance is held as the traditional sources set it out, and is central to the liturgical year of this stream.

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