Tzedakah is a duty of justice rather than an act of generosity, and the word does not mean charity.
The Amidah is said standing, silently, and then repeated aloud by the reader where a quorum is present.
Avinu Malkeinu is said in the penitential season and on fast days.
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.
The groom veils the bride before the ceremony.
The search for leaven is made by candlelight on the night before Passover eve.
The grace after meals is said in full after any meal with bread.
Brit Milah is performed by a mohel on the eighth day, and the day is not moved for convenience.
Burial is in the earth, without embalming, ordinarily within a day.
The hazzan leads congregational prayer as the shaliach tzibbur, the community's emissary, a standard office in Orthodox synagogue life.
Israel's election at Sinai for the Torah and its commandments is affirmed in essentially its classical, particularist form.
The marriage is solemnised under the canopy.
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.
Coming of age is a matter of obligation taking effect at a fixed age rather than of a ceremony conferring it.
The covenant at Sinai is read as binding in its own terms, obligating this people to the commandments as given.
Creation from nothing by divine will is held, following the classical rabbinic and medieval Jewish philosophical reading of the opening of Genesis.
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.
Elohai Neshamah is said on waking.
The public fasts of the calendar are kept, the two full fasts from sunset to nightfall and the four minor fasts from dawn.
The gabbai assigns Torah honours and corrects the public reading in Orthodox synagogue services.
Acts of loving kindness are held as one of the pillars on which the world stands, and the obligation is unlimited in a way that charity is not.
Giyur, Rituals Conversion requires acceptance of the commandments before a rabbinic court, circumcision where applicable, and immersion, and conversions performed outside this body are not recognised.
Hakafot are made with the Torah scrolls on Simchat Torah.
Halakha is held divinely given at Sinai and binding in its full detail, the classical Orthodox position.
Hashkiveinu is said at the evening service.
Hoshanot are said with the four species on each day of Sukkot.
Kabbalat Shabbat opens the Sabbath on Friday evening.
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.
Visiting the graves of parents and of the righteous is customary before the High Holy Days.
Betrothal and marriage, once separate by a year, are performed together under the canopy.
Maariv is prayed at night.
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.
Orthodox kashrut certification agencies and yeshivos both maintain the mashgiach office in its two senses.
The Masoretic Text is held as the authoritative Hebrew text of the Tanakh.
The dead are remembered at Yizkor on four days of the year.
A personal Messiah and the rebuilding of the Temple are awaited literally, per Maimonides' twelfth principle of faith.
Midrashic literature is held as authoritative rabbinic interpretation of scripture.
Immersion is required for conversion, for family purity, and for vessels bought from a non-Jew.
Mincha is prayed in the afternoon.
The Mishnah, the Talmud's foundational layer, 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 divine obligations, six hundred and thirteen of them, and their performance is the ordinary shape of a Jewish life.
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.
Orthodox mohelim perform brit milah as the father's halakhic agent.
The Mourner's Kaddish is said for eleven months by a child for a parent, and it requires a quorum.
Musaf is prayed on Sabbaths, new moons and festivals, and it asks in plain words for the restoration of the Temple and its offerings.
Mussar, the disciplined work on character, entered the yeshiva world in the nineteenth century and is taught in many of them.
A boy is named at his circumcision, a girl at a Torah reading.
Hands are washed with a vessel on rising and before eating bread.
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.
Nusach Ashkenaz is used in the congregations of this body descended from the communities of the Rhineland and eastern Europe.
Nusach Edot HaMizrach is used in the Sephardi and Mizrahi congregations of this body.
Nusach Sefard is used in the Hasidic congregations of this body.
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 throughout the daily liturgy, which this stream keeps without alteration on this point.
The Oral Torah in its entirety is held as revealed at Sinai alongside the Written Torah and equally binding.
Oseh Shalom closes the Amidah and the Kaddish.
The Seder is conducted from the Haggadah in full, with the four cups and the four questions.
Pesukei Dezimra opens the morning service.
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.
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.
Orthodox Judaism follows the classical model: an individual posek, recognized through scholarship and communal trust, rules on halakhic questions.
Prayer is obligatory, fixed in text and in time, and the obligation falls on men three times daily.
Prophecy is held to have been real and to have ceased with the later biblical prophets, its record now closed and read through the tradition.
The Purim play is a licensed annual reversal, and in the yeshivot it is turned on the institution itself.
Orthodox Judaism ordains rabbis through yeshiva semicha; the mainstream movement does not ordain women.
The Council's members are Orthodox rabbis, most of them in the Modern Orthodox current.
Orthodox communities recognize the rebbetzin's informal teaching and counseling authority, especially on questions of family purity.
Redemption is held as a future and public event, national as well as individual, tied to the coming of the messiah and the return from exile.
Bodily resurrection of the dead is affirmed literally, per Maimonides' thirteenth principle of faith.
The Omer is counted aloud, with a blessing, on each of the forty-nine nights.
Selichot are said in the penitential season and on the fast days.
The Sabbath as a day of prescribed rest, prayer and meals is the frame the whole week is built on.
Shacharit is prayed daily, ordinarily with a quorum of ten, with tefillin on weekdays.
The Shema is said morning and evening as a Torah obligation and again before sleep.
The body is watched continuously from death until burial.
The seven blessings are said under the canopy and repeated at meals through the following week.
Shiva, Rituals Seven days of mourning are kept at home, the mourners seated low and not going out.
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.
Orthodox communities require a Torah scroll, tefillin and mezuzot written by a qualified sofer to the full halakhic standard.
Scribal work on Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzot is done to the received halakhic standards, and a scroll that fails them is not used.
The body is washed and purified by the burial society before dressing.
The Talmud, recording the Oral Torah, is held as authoritative and binding alongside the Written Torah.
The Tanakh is Judaism's foundational scripture, held as divinely revealed.
Repentance is held as a real and available return, structured through the ten days between the new year and the day of atonement.
In continuous use since the thirteenth century, apart from the years of the German occupation.
The seat of the Vilna Gaon and of the Mitnagdic opposition to Hasidism. The building was destroyed in the Holocaust and afterwards.
Repair of the world is read in its older liturgical and kabbalistic sense, the ordering of the world under God rather than a programme of social reform.
Maaser, the tenth, is given from income, and the practice survived the loss of the agricultural tithes it began as.
The Torah, the Five Books of Moses, is held as verbatim divine revelation given at Sinai.
Affirmed per Maimonides' eighth and ninth principles of faith: the Torah in hand, written and oral, is the very revelation given to Moses at Sinai and stands unchanged.
A boy's first haircut is delayed to his third birthday.
The Yahrzeit is kept with Kaddish and a lamp on the anniversary of a death.
The couple withdraw alone after the ceremony, which completes the marriage in halakhah.
Yizkor is said on Yom Kippur and on the last days of the three festivals.