Rabbinic Judaism Although there are now profound differences among Jewish denominations of Rabbinic Judaism with respect to the binding force of "halakha" (Jewish religious law) and the willingness to challenge preceding interpretations, all identify themselves as coming from the tradition of the oral law and the rabbinic method of analysis. Rabbinic Judaism is distinguished by belief in Moses as "our Rabbi" and that God revealed the Torah in two parts, as both the Written and the Oral Torah, also known as the Mishnah. All the laws in the Written Torah are recorded only as part of a narrative describing God imparting these
Sephardic law and customs a local custom. So far, then, it is meaningless to speak of "Sephardic custom": all that is meant is Jewish law without the particular customs of the Ashkenazim. For this reason, the law accepted by other non-Ashkenazi communities, such as the Italian and Yemenite Jews, is basically similar to that of the Sephardim. There are of course customs peculiar to particular countries or communities within the Sephardic world, such as Syria and Morocco. An important body of customs grew up in the Kabbalistic circle of Isaac Luria and his followers in Safed, and many of these have spread to communities