Loi, Codification de la

The first great codification was born of a trauma: the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70, then the crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135. Deprived of its cultic center, Judaism reorganized itself around study and the Law. It was in the academies of Galilee that, around the year 200, the redaction of the Mishna was accomplished, under the authority of Rabbi Yehouda ha-Nassi, called simply "Rabbi" or "the Prince."

The Mishna brings together and orders the oral law — that body of traditions, decisions and debates that tradition considered to have been transmitted orally from Sinai at the same time as the Written Law. The redaction posed a formidable theological problem: to commit to writing what was meant, in principle, to remain oral. Necessity prevailed over scruple, in the face of the risk of the dispersion of masters and loss of knowledge. The work organizes the material into six orders (sedarim) covering agriculture, festivals, matrimonial law, civil and criminal law, worship and laws of purity. The Mishna is not a code in the strict sense — it often preserves divergent opinions rather than settling them — but it becomes the foundation upon which all subsequent edifice will be built.

The Mishna, scarcely completed, becomes in turn an object of study and commentary. Two great centers discuss it: the academies of the Land of Israel and, especially, those of Babylonia, at Sura and Pumbedita. From these debates arise two Talmuds: the Talmud of Jerusalem, closed around the 4th-5th century, and the Talmud of Babylonia, completed around the 6th century, infinitely vaster and more influential.

The Talmud is not a code: it is the opposite of a code. It preserves the movement of discussion, objections, discarded hypotheses, narratives. It records the Gemara, that dialectical commentary which envelops each phrase of the Mishna. This open form is at once the richness and the difficulty of the corpus: it transmits reasoning as much as conclusion, but it makes difficult the extraction of a clear decision for daily practice. It is precisely this difficulty that would call, centuries later, for the effort of proper codification: to render the Law usable without requiring of each Jew the mastery of the talmudic ocean.

Between the 9th and 12th centuries, the need to order talmudic matter becomes pressing, as diaspora communities multiply from the Maghreb to Spain. The Geonic authorities of Babylonia open the way with their collections of decisions and their first manuals. But it is in North Africa and Spain that the enterprise takes shape.

In Kairouan, then in the Sephardic world, Rabbi Isaac Alfassi — the "Rif" — composes in the 11th century a vast abridgment of the Talmud that retains only what pertains to practice, eliminating developments that became obsolete after the destruction of the Temple. His work, born between Fez and Spain, becomes a decisive milestone: it prepares the passage from discussion to decision. This Sephardic movement, rooted in merchant and learned cities in contact with the Islamic world and its juridical culture, shapes a methodical and synthetic way of approaching the Law — the very approach that will culminate with Maimonides.

With Moses Maimonides — Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, the "Rambam" — codification reaches its highest ambition. Born in Cordoba in 1138, forced into exile by Almohad persecutions, he eventually settled in Fostat, near Cairo, where he became a physician and guide to the community. It was there that he completed, around 1180, his monumental work: the Mishneh Torah, "repetition of the Law," also called Yad ha-Hazaka, the "strong hand" — the fourteen books corresponding to the numerical value of the word yad.

Maimonides' audacity is twofold. First, he composed an exhaustive code embracing the entirety of the Law, including the laws of the Temple and of kingship that no longer had practical application, in clear and masterful Hebrew. Second, he made decisions: he stated the ruling without citing his sources or competing opinions, seeking to offer a work where the reader would find the Law "at a glance." This method, revolutionary, provoked immediate criticism — how to decide without showing where one's decision comes from? Yet the Mishneh Torah established itself as one of the absolute summits of Jewish legal thought, and remains an indispensable reference.

The codifying enterprise continues in 14th-century Spain. Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, son of the great Asher ben Yehiel who came from Germany to Toledo, composed the Arbaa Turim — the "Four Rows" or "Four Columns." This work adopts an organization that would prove influential, dividing all the halakhic material applicable in his time into four major domains: Orah Hayim (daily conduct, prayers and festivals), Yoré Déa (prohibitions, particularly dietary), Even ha-Ezer (matrimonial law) and Hoshen Mishpat (civil law).

Unlike Maimonides, Jacob ben Asher renounced laws without present application and, above all, restored the plurality of opinions, citing authorities and signaling divergences between Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions. This quadripartite structure, at once complete for real life and respectful of controversies, would become the frame of reference for all subsequent codification. It is upon this very skeleton that, two centuries later, the Beit Yossef and then the Shulhan Arukh would rely.

The most enduring synthesis is born in the mystical city of Safed, in Ottoman Galilee, in the sixteenth century. Rabbi Yossef ben Ephraïm Karo is born in 1488 in Toledo, in Castile, and dies in 1575 in Safed, in the Ottoman Empire. A Talmudist and kabbalist, marked from childhood by the Spanish exile of 1492, he devotes decades to an immense commentary on the Arbaa Tourim, the Beit Yossef, before drawing from it a practical condensation.

This condensation is the Shulchan Aruch. The Shulchan Aruch, in Hebrew "set table," is a code of Jewish Law compiled by Joseph Karo in the sixteenth century. A condensation of his great work, the Beit Yossef, and designed on the model of the Arbaa Tourim, it enacts the laws pertaining to the four principal domains of Jewish life: daily life, religious life, conjugal life, and civil law. It thus becomes the new reference in matters of Jewish Law and, consequently, one of the fundamental books of Judaism to this day.

The work expressed above all the Sephardic tradition. Its universal scope owes to a decisive addition: the glosses of the Ashkenazi master Moïse Isserlès of Cracow, the Mappa — the "tablecloth" laid upon the "table" — which signals divergent Ashkenazi practices. From this encounter between Safed and Cracow is born the code accepted by the whole Jewish people, Sephardic as well as Ashkenazi, still today the authoritative reference of halakha.

Rabbi Yehouda ha-Nassi (ca. 135 – ca. 217) — Called "Rabbi" or "the Prince," patriarch of the Jewish community in Galilee, he directs the redaction and ordering of the Mishna around the year 200. Gathering the traditions of the oral law threatened with dispersion after the catastrophes of the 1st and 2nd centuries, he establishes its six orders. His work, the foundation of all subsequent Rabbinic Judaism, determines the very form that the Talmuds will take and, through them, all codification to come.

Rabbi Its'hak Alfassi (1013–1103) — The "Rif," born near Fès and active in the Maghreb and then Spain, composed in the 11th century a decisive abridgment of the Talmud, retaining only applicable matter. By drawing out the practical conclusion from Talmudic discussion, he paves the way for medieval codification and directly inspires Maimonides and the Sephardic masters who followed him.

Moïse Maimonides (1138–1204) — Rabbi Moshe ben Maïmon, the "Rambam," born in Cordova, exiled to Morocco and then settled in Fostat in Egypt, physician and philosopher. He completed around 1180 the Mishné Torah, an exhaustive code of all the Law written in lucid and trenchant Hebrew without citing his sources. This work of unprecedented ambition remains one of the summits of Jewish codification, debated and studied to this day.

Jacob ben Asher (ca. 1269 – ca. 1343) — Son of Asher ben Yehiel, he settled in Toledo and composed the Arbaa Tourim, which distributes applicable Law into four great domains. By restoring the plurality of opinions and by confronting Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions, he creates the quadripartite architecture that will serve as the framework for the Beit Yossef and the Shulhan Arukh.

Joseph Karo (1488–1575) — Rabbi Yossef ben Ephraïm Karo, born in Toledo, marked by the exile from Spain, settled in Safed. Talmudist, Kabbalist, legislator and codifier, in composing the Shulhan Arukh, he becomes the greatest halakhic decisor of the Jewish people. His Beit Yossef and then his Shulhan Arukh fix Sephardic Law and, completed by Ashkenazi glosses, become the universally accepted code.

Moïse Isserlès (ca. 1530 – 1572) — The "Rema," master of Cracow, adds to the Shulhan Arukh his glosses, the Mappa, which record the Ashkenazi usages divergent from Karo's Sephardic tradition. Thanks to this contribution, the code of Safed becomes acceptable to the entire Jewish world, making the Shulhan Arukh the halakhic authority common to both Sephardim and Ashkenazim.

The history of the codification of Jewish Law draws a repeated gesture across centuries and continents: at each threat of dispersion, a master rises to order and save. From the Galilee of Rabbi Yehouda ha-Nassi to the Babylonian academies, from Fès to Fostat, from Toledo to Safed and Cracow, the Law has continually circulated between the centers of the diaspora, each code responding to the one that preceded it. The tension between the fear of freezing a living word and the necessity of transmitting it has never been resolved once and for all: it is the very engine of this history. In giving the Law a written and shared form, the codifiers have, according to Shmuel Trigano, founded far more than a legal system — the political order and the unity of a people without common territory [Trigano, 1991]. The Shulchan Aruch, both Sephardic and Ashkenazi, remains the symbol of this Law at once singular and plural.