The human capacity to act physically is a central instrument in humans’ encounter with the world in its widest possible sense, objects, animals, and humans.
From what was called the ‘silent world’ (in medieval texts, to the world of ‘he who speaks’ (מדבר – (the human. Regulating human actions is a central theme in the Halachah. The actions in question include not only physical, visible actions – emotions and thoughts, too, fall under the remit of the Halacha. Although the
concept is not always defined unequivocally,1 recurring elements are the legal, normative character of the Halachah, in comparison to the more general guiding values and ethical principles that are the concern of Aggadah. The Halachah is an important part of the classical literature of rabbinic Judaism and is a dominant
factor in the identity formation of orthodoxy in modern times.2 Halachah is an umbrella concept which, for the rabbis, encompasses all facets of lifeccording to the Talmud, since the destruction of the Temple, God has lived ‘in the four cubits of the Halachah