Shulchan Aruch HaRav
Shulchan Aruch HaRav (
Hebrew: "Code of
Jewish Law by the
Rabbi"; also
Shulkhan Arukh HaRav) is a
codification of
halakha by Rabbi
Shneur Zalman of Liadi, known during his lifetime as
HaRav ("The Rabbi"). At a young age, Rabbi
Shneur Zalman was asked by his teacher, Rabbi
Dovber of Mezeritch to recodify the
Shulkhan Arukh of Rabbi
Yosef Karo so that laymen would be able to study
Jewish law. The work thus states the
decided halakha, as well as the underlying reasoning.
The Shulchan Aruch HaRav is today used by
Hasidim as their basis for daily practice. In other branches of
Orthodox Judaism, the work is generally considered authoritative, and citations to it are found in non-Lubavitch sources such as the
Mishnah Berurah and the
Ben Ish Chai.
Shulchan Aruch HaRav is one of three works on which
Shlomo Ganzfried based his
rulings in the
Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh, the well known precis of
Jewish law.
Although widely accepted, the work was originally limited in printings. Much of the text was lost in a fire in Lubavitch, and only parts of copies of the draft survied.
Kehot Publication Society (2002) has recently issued a Bilingual Edition; in this work notations appear when Shneur Zalman's rulings are at variance with those in Yosef Karo`s
Shulkhan Arukh.
*
Fulltext (
Hebrew), chabadlibrary.org
