When the Temple was gone, teachers called rabbis led Jewish life through the synagogue and the study of Torah, as they still do.
Judaism70grew out of Second Temple Judaism
After the Temple's destruction in 70 CE, rabbinic communities increasingly organised Jewish life around Torah study, prayer and law. The Mishnah was compiled around 200 CE; the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds developed in later centuries. Medieval Masoretes transmitted the Hebrew text with vocalisation and annotations. The Leningrad Codex is a major source for modern Hebrew Bible editions, not the basis of every printed Tanakh.
When the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish people did not disappear. Teachers called rabbis rebuilt Jewish life around the synagogue, the study of Torah and the home, and that is the Judaism that exists today.
The Talmud tells how Yohanan ben Zakkai was carried out of besieged Jerusalem in a coffin and asked the Roman commander for the town of Yavneh and its sages 10,3,8. At Yavneh the rabbis, heirs of the Pharisees, fixed the order of prayer, settled questions about Scripture and began to gather the oral Torah, the teaching handed down beside the written one, which Pirkei Avot traces from Moses at Sinai through Joshua, the elders and the prophets to the sages 9,6. Rabbi Akiva, the greatest of them, was put to death by Rome after the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132 to 135 4.
About the year 200 Judah the Prince compiled the Mishnah, the oral law set out in six orders, from Seeds to Purities 2,5. Over the next three centuries the academies of the Land of Israel and of Babylonia discussed every line of it, and those discussions, the Gemara, together with the Mishnah, are the Talmud: the Jerusalem Talmud completed about 400 and the Babylonian Talmud about 500 1,7,12. In the Middle Ages Rashi of Troyes wrote the commentary printed beside every page of it, and Maimonides in Egypt set the whole law in order in his Mishneh Torah and its beliefs in thirteen principles 13,14. The scribes called Masoretes fixed the text of the Hebrew Bible itself, with vowels and notes; the Aleppo Codex of the tenth century is their masterpiece 21.
Rabbinic Jews believe that God gave Israel the Torah at Sinai in two forms, written and spoken, and that studying it and living by it is how a person serves God. Study is itself a form of worship.
The first words of Pirkei Avot are the charter: Moses received the Torah from Sinai and handed it on to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the men of the Great Assembly 9. The oral Torah, written down in the Mishnah and Talmud, explains how the written commandments are kept, and the law worked out from both is halakhah, the way to walk 6,12. Hillel, asked to teach the whole Torah while a man stood on one foot, said: what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; that is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary, go and learn 11. Rabbi Akiva called Love your neighbour as yourself the great principle of the Torah 4,23.
The Talmud records disagreement on almost every page and keeps the minority opinion; in one famous story the rabbis overrule a voice from heaven with the verse It is not in heaven, because the Torah has been given to people to interpret 24,1. Maimonides' thirteen principles, God's unity, the Torah from heaven, the coming of the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead among them, are the nearest thing Judaism has to a creed, and synagogues sing them as the hymn Yigdal 14.
Worship and practice
Jews pray three times a day, morning, afternoon and evening, and on the Sabbath they gather in the synagogue to hear the Torah read from a handwritten scroll. The rabbis gave these prayers their shape.
The daily prayers took the place of the daily sacrifices: the Shema, Hear O Israel, with its blessings, and the Amidah, the standing prayer, morning and evening, with an afternoon service besides 22,6,1. On Sabbath and festival mornings the weekly portion of the Torah is read and a passage from the Prophets follows it; the whole Torah is finished each year and begun again at Simchat Torah 1. The home matters as much as the synagogue: the Sabbath table with candles, wine and bread, the Passover seder, the sukkah in autumn 12. A rabbi teaches and answers questions of law, a cantor leads the singing, and a minyan is a quorum for certain communal prayers. Orthodox practice requires ten Jewish males aged thirteen or older; egalitarian movements also count women 25,26,1.
Scripture and Bible translations
The rabbis' Bible is the Tanakh, twenty-four books in Hebrew: the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings. It is never read alone. The Talmud and the commentaries are read with it.
The Masoretes of Tiberias fixed the Hebrew text with vowel points and cantillation marks between the seventh and tenth centuries; the Aleppo Codex, about 930, and the Leningrad Codex of 1008 are their surviving codices, and every printed Hebrew Bible rests on them 21. Rashi's commentary on the Torah is the first thing a Jewish child learns after the text itself 13. Read here: the pointed Hebrew of the Leningrad Codex, the JPS translation of 1917, made by Jewish scholars in the Tanakh's own order, and the Modern Hebrew Bible. The versions guide lists the editions each movement reads today.
In synagogue
In many synagogues, the Torah is chanted from a handwritten Hebrew scroll and a haftarah is read from the Prophets. Common English-language study and pew editions include the ArtScroll Stone Edition in Orthodox settings, Etz Hayim in Conservative settings and The Torah: A Modern Commentary (Plaut) in Reform settings. Local practice varies.
At home
The Jewish Publication Society describes its 1985 JPS Tanakh, produced with scholars from several Jewish movements, as the most widely read English translation of the Hebrew Bible. Orthodox readers also use Koren and ArtScroll editions.
Hasidic
Hasidic communities read Hebrew first and, in English, the ArtScroll Tanakh and, in Chabad, the Kehot Chumash.
Reconstructionist
Reconstructionist congregations use the JPS translation and the movement's own Kol Haneshamah prayer books.
Karaite
Karaite Judaism gives the Hebrew Bible authority independent of the rabbinic Oral Torah. The Westminster Leningrad Codex provides a digital form of the Masoretic Hebrew text, but it should not be treated as a uniquely Karaite edition.
These passages illustrate themes discussed in this profile; they are not a survey of members' favorite verses. Each is quoted from the JPS TaNaKH 1917 and links to its chapter. You can explore the text for study or personal reflection; memorization is optional.
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
The commandment to teach the Torah to your children and to speak of it at home and on the road. Rabbinic Judaism is this verse carried out for two thousand years.
It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say: 'Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?'
It is not in heaven. The verse the rabbis quoted to say that the Torah, once given, is for people to interpret, and that even a voice from heaven does not settle an argument.
This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy ways prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
Meditate on it day and night. The verse behind the ideal of lifelong study, and behind the daily page of Talmud that Jews around the world learn together.
She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her, and happy is every one that holdest her fast.
She is a tree of life. Sung in every synagogue as the Torah scroll is returned to the ark.
People
Hillelabout 110 BCE to 10 CE The sage of the late Second Temple whose gentleness and sayings, above all the rule about what is hateful to you, open the rabbinic tradition.11
Yohanan ben Zakkaidied about 90 CE The rabbi who escaped besieged Jerusalem, founded the academy at Yavneh, and turned a religion of Temple and sacrifice into one of study and prayer.3
Akivaabout 50 to 135 CE A shepherd who began to learn at forty and became the greatest of the sages, systematiser of the oral law, martyred by Rome after the Bar Kokhba revolt.4
Judah the Princeabout 135 to 217 CE The patriarch of the Jews under Rome who compiled the Mishnah, the first written form of the oral Torah.5
Rashi1040 to 1105 Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki of Troyes, whose commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud are printed beside the text in every traditional edition.13
Maimonides1138 to 1204 Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, physician and philosopher in Cairo, who codified the whole of Jewish law in the Mishneh Torah and set out the thirteen principles of faith.14
Today
About fifteen million Jews live in the world today, nearly half of them in Israel and most of the rest in the United States. Almost all Jewish life, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform, is Rabbinic Judaism.
Pew counted 14.8 million Jews in 2020, two in every thousand people on earth 20. Every movement on the tree below this branch, Orthodox and Hasidic, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist, stands on the rabbis' Torah, the synagogue and the prayer book, and they differ over how binding halakhah is and how it may change; only the Karaites step outside it 6,1. The Talmud is studied today more widely than at any time in its history, in the daily-page cycle that finishes the whole Babylonian Talmud every seven and a half years and online in Hebrew and English 12,1.
For most of these centuries Jews lived as a minority under Christian and Muslim rule, and under Christian rule that often meant violence: the massacre of the Rhineland communities by the First Crusade in 1096 16, the burning of cartloads of Talmud manuscripts in Paris in 1242 after a staged disputation 17, expulsion from Spain in 1492 15, and in the twentieth century the murder of six million Jews in the Shoah 18. The tradition also drew hard lines of its own: the Amsterdam community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza in 1656 for his opinions, a ban that was never lifted 19.
Words to know
rabbi
A teacher of Torah. The word means my master. After the Temple fell, rabbis became the leaders and judges of Jewish communities, and they still lead synagogues today.
Torah
The first five books of the Bible, and more broadly the whole of God's teaching. A Torah scroll is read in every synagogue.
Mishnah
The first written collection of the oral Torah, the rabbis' teaching on how to keep the commandments, compiled by Judah the Prince about 200 CE.
Talmud
The Mishnah together with the rabbis' discussions of it over the next three centuries. The Babylonian Talmud, completed about 500 CE, is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism.
halakhah
Jewish law: the way to walk, worked out from the Torah by the rabbis. It covers prayer, food, the Sabbath, business and family life.
synagogue
A house of gathering where Jews meet to pray and hear the Torah read. It grew up during and after the exile, alongside the Temple, and outlived it.
Shabbat
The seventh day, from Friday sunset to Saturday nightfall, kept as a day of rest because the Torah commands it in the Ten Commandments; Jews light candles, bless wine and bread, and do no work. Christians who keep a Sabbath on Saturday, such as Seventh-day Adventists, use the same commandment.
Passover, the eight-day festival (seven in Israel) that remembers the Exodus from Egypt, commanded in the Torah and kept with the seder meal and unleavened bread; it begins on 15 Nisan in spring.
The Mishnah, the oral law compiled about 200 CE, together with the Gemara, three centuries of rabbinic discussion of it, in some six thousand pages. There are two: the Jerusalem Talmud, finished about 400, and the Babylonian Talmud, finished about 500, which became the central text of Jewish law and learning 1,7,12.
What is the oral Torah?
The teaching that Rabbinic Judaism holds was given to Moses at Sinai along with the written Torah and handed down by word of mouth, explaining how the commandments are to be kept. Pirkei Avot traces the chain from Moses to the sages; the Mishnah and Talmud are where it was finally written down 9,6.
Are Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews all Rabbinic Jews?
Yes. All three movements, and the Hasidic and Reconstructionist ones with them, pray from the prayer book the rabbis shaped, read the Torah on the rabbis' calendar, and reason from the Talmud; they differ on how binding halakhah is and who may change it 6,1. The Karaites, who accept the written Torah alone, are the one Jewish movement on the tree that does not.
How is Rabbinic Judaism different from the Judaism of the Bible?
The Bible's Judaism had a Temple, priests and sacrifice at its centre. When the Temple fell in 70 CE, the rabbis put prayer, study and the keeping of the commandments in its place, with the synagogue and the home as the places where God is served, and they read the Bible through the oral Torah 10,3,6. Rabbinic Judaism sees itself as the same covenant carried on without the Temple, not as a new religion.
Sources
Numbered references link the account above to its sources. These include the tradition's own documents and outside reference works. The review status below distinguishes source checking from completed member and scholarly review.
BibleVerse. “Rabbinic Judaism: where they came from, what they hold, and the Bible they read.” bibleverse.site, version 2026-09-09, https://bibleverse.site/denominations/rabbinic/
Awaiting review by a member of the tradition. First published 2026-09-06; last changed 2026-09-09. Years before the common era are written BCE, and after it CE, as Jewish readers write them.
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