Rabbinic Rulings

A ruling issued by a rabbinic authority or a court, binding on the community that accepts it. Two distinct instruments sit under this heading. A takkanah is a legislative enactment, made for the good order of the community and capable of binding practice for a thousand years. A herem is an exclusion from the community, applied to a person, and the most famous of them has never been rescinded. Both are recorded here with the body that issued them and the extent of their reach, which in each case is a particular community rather than Judaism as a whole.