Reading the Halakhah as a religious statement: Part One

The letter forms the medium for the spirit, so the letter of the law of the Torah here stands forth as the embodiment of the religion of the law of the Torah. The Halakhah, or law, focuses on the interiority of holy Israel's life; the Aggadah, or lore, on the exteriority of Israel's relationships. How exactly the Halakhah is to be read as a religious statement is spelled out in this article. But what about Israel within? I maintain that the Halakhah embodies the extension of God's design for world order into the inner-facing relationships of 1] God and Israel, 2] Israel's inner order in its own terms, and 3] the Israelite's household viewed on its own in time and space and social circumstance. If we wish to explore the interiority of Israel in relationship with God, as a shared order, and of Israel's autonomous building block, the household, we are required to take up the norms of everyday conduct that define Israel and signify its sanctification. We commence by examining the data that reveal the governing category-formation: how precisely the Halakhah organises and systematises the Torah's facts and rules of ordinary life.