Jewish Law

Legal regulations and obligations were central to Judaism from the very beginning, in the Torah itself. But Jewish law (halakha) developed throughout the centuries, and study of that law became one of the main foci of the rabbis of the first centuries following the destruction of the Temple. The arguments and deliberations of the Talmudic rabbis provided the raw material for rabbinic codifiers in the Middle Ages, with Maimonides and others providing more or less complete versions of a Jew’s responsibilities. The importance of the halakhic system to Jews led to the writing (in manuscripts) and then printing of many Jewish law codes, works always central to the Jewish library. Surprisingly, perhaps, these works were not only matter-of-fact records of halakha, but they were sometimes decorated and illustrated, becoming works of art. The creators of such volumes evidently believed that legal writings, too, should be beautiful.