Louis Jacobs
From Free net encyclopedia
Rabbi Dr. Louis Jacobs was born on 17 July1920 in Manchester, England. Jacobs is a Masorti rabbi, the first leader of Masorti Judaism (also known as Conservative Judaism) in the United Kingdom, and a leading writer and thinker on Judaism. He also became known as the focus of events in the early 1960s that came to be known as "The Jacobs Affair".
Contents |
Early career
Jacobs studied at Manchester yeshivah, andlater at the kolel in Gateshead. He was ordained as an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, studied at University College London and was appointed rabbi at Manchester Central Synagogue in 1948. In 1954 he was appointed to the New West End Synagogue in London.
He became Moral Tutor at at Jews' College, London, where he taught Talmud and homiletics during the last years of Rabbi Isidore Epstein's tenure as principal. Jacobs was on the liberal side of Orthodox Judaism, and has sought to find a synthesis that would accommodate Orthodox Jewish theology and modern day higher biblical criticism. Jacobs was especially concerned with how to reconcile modern day Orthodox Jewish faith with the documentary hypothesis. His ideas about the subject were published in a book entitled We Have Reason to Believe, published in 1957. It was the subject of some mild criticism at the time, but was not the subject of any major censure.
The "Jacobs Affair"
It had been widely assumed that after Epstein's retirement he would be succeeded by Jacobs. When this assumption was translated into a definite invitation by the College's Board of Trustees in 1961, the then Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Israel Brodie, interdicted the appointment "because of his [Jacobs's] published views". This was a reference to We Have Reason to Believe.
The British journal, The Jewish Chronicle, took up the issue and turned it into a cause celebre which was reported in the national press, including The Times. When Jacobs wished to return to his pulpit at the New West End Synagogue Brodie vetoed his appointment. A number of members then left the New West End Synagogue to found the New London Synagogue.
The New London Synagogue
The defecting congregation purchased the old St. John's Wood synagogue building, and installed Jacobs as its rabbi — a post which he held until 1995 and to which he returned in 2005. This congregation became the "parent" of the Masorti movement in the United Kingdom, which now numbers several congregations.
Since this time however, Jacobs and the Masorti movement have been subject to consistent hostility from more conservative British Jewish institutions. On occasions this has appeared petty; on his 83rd birthday, in the Bournemouth (Orthodox) synagogue on the sabbath before his granddaughter's wedding, Jacobs was denied the honour of an aliyah customarily given to the father of the bride, which gave rise to heated correspondence in the Jewish press.
In December 2005, however, a Jewish Chronicle poll in which 2000 readers took part voted Jacobs the greatest British Jew in the community's 350-year history in England.
Selected publications
- Jewish Prayer
- We Have Reason to Believe (1957)
- A Guide to Rosh Ha-Shanah
- A Guide to Yom Kippur
- Jewish Values
- Jewish Thought Today (Chain of Tradition Series, Vol. 3)
- The Palm Tree of Deborah (ed.)
- Studies in Talmudic Logic (and Methodology) (1961)
- Faith
- A Jewish Theology
- Jewish Ethics, Philosophy and Mysticism.
- The Book of Jewish Belief
- What does Judaism say about ...? (The New York times library of Jewish knowledge)
- Helping With Inquiries (autobiography) (1989) ISBN 0853032319