Customs are rituals, ceremonies, and practices adopted by a particular group or by the entire people in general. When people are observed following a specific form of conduct, that practice acquires a kind of legal status in Judaism. As it is written in the Talmudic tractate Berahot (45a), “Go out and observe what people are really doing.”

Minhag, which in Hebrew means custom, comes from the root N-H-G which means to follow or lead and by extension refers to personal conduct. There are customs, minhagim, that date back to Talmudic times, such as the waving of willow branches on Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh day of Sukkot. In rabbinic literature there is talk of the importance of maintaining such customs that have lasted a long time. In Tosafot or Menahot 20b it is said that “the minhag of our fathers is equivalent to the Torah.” Rabbi Moises Isserles, who adapted Yosef Caro’s Shulchan Aruch to Ashkenazi customs, said that the customs of old should be preserved.

For example, in Germany in the Middle Ages, Jews followed some practices copied from their non-Jewish neighbors. One example is the custom of breaking a glass cup at the wedding ceremony. The German Christians did this in order to «trick» the demons, making them believe that the ceremony was a catastrophe and not a celebration, so that they would leave the bride and groom alone. This custom was adopted by the German Jews and became a common practice, which was eventually accepted by the rabbis, although they gave it a different meaning, that of remembering, on the wedding day, the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem.

Another example is the ceremony of Kaparot, atonement, on Yom Kippur. The Ashkenazi Jews practiced it by sacrificing a young rooster to atone for their sins. Yosef Caro wrote in the Shulchan Aruch that this was a superstitious practice and that it should be abolished, but Moises Isserles presented it in his gloss as a custom with the full force of law.

There was always a climate of tension when it came to accepting new customs. On the one hand there was the need to understand the culture of the group and remain faithful to Judaism, but on the other hand there was the pagan origin of many of them. In general, deeply rooted customs were mostly accepted by the rabbis rather than rejected. It is obvious that many of these customs were later given an explanation to give them some Jewish meaning.

Differences in customs do not only occur between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. They also exist between different denominations. Reform Jews consider most of them to be superstitions and therefore discard them, while Orthodox Jews, while acknowledging that their origin may not be very Jewish, maintain them as a folkloric aspect of Judaism and as a barrier to assimilation. They are maintained, then, by habit.

Prepared by Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: Articles by Abraham Chill and William Rosenau cited by Louis Jacobs in “The Jewish Religion, a Companion” and other sources.