Dear Friends,
It has been two months since my last blog post! This is because the organization of the Memorial Events over the months of June and July took so much time that Ivor and I could not dedicate ourselves to the content of the website. There were too few articles worth noting for an email, so we decided to postpone it to the following month.
Thankfully, the Memorial events all went extremely well. If you could not attend or wish to re-experience any of them, you will find all the relevant material on the website! Everything is there, from the promotional brochures that circulated prior to the event, to Rabbi Dr Jeremy Rosen’s lectures on Sunday 10th and Monday 11th July, and even including some details on the special commemoration shabbatot hosted by the New North London and New London Synagogues, on 9th and 22nd July respectively.
Similarly, the recording of the smaller group discussion hosted on 8th August at Ivor’s house in Finchley by Simon Eder, on the subject of Miracles, will be available on the website very shortly!
Since then, we’ve returned to our regular activities and events. I uploaded a number of additional articles and reviews over the past two weeks, including a few noteworthy pieces, such as:
– a Jewish Chronicle article offering insights into religious questioning and doubt;
– a paper on the relationship between the concepts of freedom and law in Judaism, delivered during the festival of Passover;
– a beautiful dvar Torah on an upcoming parashah, Re’eh, which we will be reading in just under a month;
– some reflections, in the form of a book review, on the historicity of the biblical narrative;
– some comments, written in a lengthy Jewish Chronicle article in 1986, on the impact of the Jacobs Affair;
– another review of a book about Judaism written by the famous (non-Jewish) theologian Hans Küng.
These links should offer the reader a glimpse into the huge number of articles, reviews, encyclopedia entries, divrei Torah, and so on, written over the course of Rabbi Jacobs’s long and prolific career. As the months go by, and ever-growing number of these are located and uploaded on the website. This marks the progress of our Project. At this stage, I’m very excited to announce that the large majority of items listed in the official bibliography of scholarly writings of Louis Jacobs, compiled nearly ten years ago, are now available… and it won’t be long before they all are! So stay tuned!
To those who have spent the day fasting, I hope you had an easy and meaningful fast. And to all, we hope you enjoy the rest of your summer holidays, and wish all the best to our friends and supporters!
Ezra
For information or feedback, please contact info@louisjacobs.org.