Snapshots of sample content from the Louis Jacobs Archive at the Leopold Muller Memorial Library

Photo 1.
Contents of the Jacobs Archive - preliminary analysis.

Photo 2.
Scrapbooks and notebooks - the key components of the Jacobs Archive.

Photo 3.
Correspondence boxes.

Photo 4.
Sample selection of letters as stored in the correspondence boxes.
|
|
About the Louis Jacobs Archive
Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs established over many years an extensive
library and collated a large and wide-ranging archive. In 2006, shortly
before he died, Louis Jacobs presented his personal library to the
Leopold Muller Memorial Library, at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and
Jewish Studies. In 2013 the Centre’s OSAJS (Oxford Seminar in Advanced
Jewish Studies) is researching Jewish Orthodoxy. To coincide with this
project Louis Jacobs’ family loaned a significant part of Jacobs’
archive to the Muller Library.
For over fifty years, Louis Jacobs and his wife Shula collected
personal and professional letters, copies of sermons, handwritten notes,
newsletters and newspaper cuttings about Jacobs himself and on the
Masorti movement.
The Library has been privileged to work on the archive for several
months prior to the exhibition. Each of the items has been itemised and
allocated a shelfmark; alongside the hand-list the archive is now a
great resource and research tool. The Library has also undertaken
the considerable task of digitising the loaned archive. Every single
page has been scanned using quality equipment to produce high resolution
images, some of which are available to browse on the website. This
digitising process complements the work begun by www.LouisJacobs.org which also displays scans of parts of the archive, as well as transcripts of Jacobs’ key texts and sermons.
The Archive contains boxes of correspondence, with up to 450 items in
each box, of which 1540 have been digitised by the Library staff. These
letters are mostly written to Jacobs, but there are also drafts and
copies of letters that he himself wrote. The correspondents include his
personal friends and family, academic scholars at home and abroad in the
fields of Jewish studies and theology, as well as letters from his
congregants, other members of the Anglo-Jewish and international Jewish
community as well as from other Jewish leaders and leaders of other
faiths. These provide an insight not just into his range of contacts and
interests, but they also highlight the vast demands that were put on
him and his time.
Of particular importance for biographical and social research are the
collections of family and community photographs, memorabilia and
certificates: stored amongst pictures of Jacobs as a child are his CBE
certificate and honorary degrees.
The other key components of Jacobs’ archive are the scrapbooks and
notebooks. In Yarnton we currently have sixteen of Jacobs’ handwritten
notebooks that contain sermon ideas, theological notes and reflections,
as well as the original versions of many of his books. These notebooks
are a real asset to the field of Jewish Studies and have been digitised,
as well as being on display at the Library in Yarnton. It is
interesting to compare the original texts and the published versions.
Whilst these books tell us of Jacobs’ thought, the scrapbooks gather
together and narrate the stories, voices and opinions of those around
him.
The seventy-seven scrapbooks contain newspaper cuttings from around
the world about Jacobs and the Jacobs affair right up until just before
his death in 2006. They have been meticulously collated. There are some
scrapbooks which only cover a few weeks, because the media attention at
the time was so intensive. Although many of these articles are available
elsewhere, this collection pulls together so much information, in such a
systematic way, over an extended period of time, that it is possible to
analyse shifts and changes in the response to Jacobs and Orthodoxy
particularly amongst the Anglo-Jewish press. All of the archive material
is available to consult in the Muller Library and forms the basis for
the exhibition and its virtual counterpart. |