Oral Torah
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The Five Books of Moses, what most people call the Torah, are considered the most ancient and sacred possessions of the Jews and Judaism. The teachings written there form the original core of the Jewish understanding of the world, and especially their understanding of themselves and their relationship with God and with the world. Jews all over the world continue to study these teachings, formally and informally, directly from the written texts of these books, which are thousands of years old.
But the traditional view, which has been passed down over the generations, holds that this series of five most ancient and sacred books are only part (the central part) of God's instruction to the Israelites and their descendants, the Jewish people. According to the rabbis, the teachers who have been passing down the Jewish traditions for over two thousand years, this Written Torah (תּוֹרָה שֶׁבִּכְתָב, Tōrā šebbīḵṯāv, '"Written Law"') forms the core of God's teaching ("torah") to Israel and is supplemented by an Oral Torah (or Oral Law; Hebrew: תּוֹרָה שֶׁבְּעַל־פֶּה, romanized: Tōrā šebbəʿal-pe), which consists of that vast body of sacred Jewish teachings that were memorized and repeated orally and were not written down formally until much later.
According to Orthodox Judaism, the oral Torah was given to Moses at Mount Sinai, to accompany the written Torah, and is fully binding upon the Jewish people. This holistic Jewish code of conduct and body of sacred lore encompasses a wide swathe of rituals, worship practices, God–man and interpersonal relationships, from dietary laws to Sabbath and festival observance to marital relations, agricultural practices, and civil claims and damages, as well as vast quantities of sacred history and narrative.
According to Rabbinic Jewish tradition, the Oral Torah was passed down orally in an unbroken chain from generation to generation until its contents were finally committed to writing following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, when Jewish civilization was faced with an existential threat, by virtue of the dispersion of the Jewish people.
The major repositories of the Oral Torah are the Mishnah, compiled between 200–220 CE by Judah ha-Nasi, and the Gemara, a series of running commentaries and debates concerning the Mishnah, which together form the Talmud, the preeminent text of Rabbinic Judaism. In fact, two "versions" of the Talmud exist: one produced in the Galilee c. 300–350 CE (the Jerusalem Talmud), and a second, more extensive Talmud compiled in Jewish Babylonia c. 450–500 CE (the Babylonian Talmud).
Belief that at least portions of the Oral Torah were transmitted orally from God to Moses on Biblical Mount Sinai during the Exodus from Egypt is a fundamental tenet of faith of Orthodox Judaism, and was recognized as one of the Thirteen Principles of Faith by Maimonides.
There have also been historical dissenters to the Oral Torah, most notably the Sadducees and Karaites, who claimed to derive their religious practice only from the Written Torah. The Beta Israel, isolated from the rest of world Jewry for many centuries, also lacked Rabbinic texts until they immigrated from Ethiopia to Israel, in recent years.