Rabbinic Judaism and property laws), requiring—according to rabbinic thought—a subsequent definition through the Oral Law. Thus Rabbinic Judaism claims that almost all directives, both positive and negative, in the Torah are non-specific in nature and require the existence of either an Oral Law, or some other method to explain them. Much rabbinic Jewish literature concerns specifying what behavior is sanctioned by the law; this body of interpretations is called "halakha" ("the way"). Until the Haskalah (Hebrew: "Jewish enlightenment") of the late 18th century, and the resulting division of Ashkenazi Jews into religious movements or denominations, especially in North America and anglophone countries,
Sephardic law and customs In the Sephardic world today, in particular in Israel, there are many popular prayer-books containing this Baghdadi rite, and this is what is currently known as "Minhag Edot ha-Mizraḥ" (the custom of the Oriental congregations). Other authorities, especially older rabbis from North Africa, reject these in favour of a more conservative Oriental-Sephardic text as found in the 19th century Livorno editions; and the "Shami" Yemenite and Syrian rites belong to this group. Others again, following R. Ovadia Yosef, prefer a form shorn of some of the Kabbalistic additions and nearer to what would have been known to R. Joseph Caro,