Continuing the QUEST

Return of the 2015 dialogue between

Rabbi Francis Nataf and Rabbi Chaim Weiner

Thursday 11th May 2023 in central Finchley

From Louis to Lindsey

Miri Freud-Kandel

at JW3 7th February 2022

This is a recording of an event that was not hosted by us, but is made available and will be available to the rest of our readers.

What is the Purpose of Synagogue Today

Matt Plen and Simon Eder in Discussion

Event held on 18th April 2021

This extra video is now available to non Books site members.

Saving Judaism from the Extremes

The legacy of Leopold Zunz

Simon Eder Study Group April 2017

Simon looked at the extraordinary parallels between Zunz and Jacobs and asked, as much of world Jewry has veered ever further to the right, –  can the Middle Way be restored?

It is the 200th anniversary of the publication of the groundbreaking article On Rabbinic Literature. In twenty pages, Zunz – son of an assistant Cantor – created critical Jewish scholarship. Described as a “Jewish Luther” he uncovered the power of science as applied to our tradition and its texts. He was a trail blazer for all who follow, among them Rabbi, Louis Jacobs. What is the legacy of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement? What are the extraordinary parallels between Zunz and Jacobs? As much of world Jewry has veered ever further to the right – can the Middle Way be restored?

Limmud Panel 2018 – Is Theology Dead?

Louis Jacobs, alongside Abraham J. Heschel and others, deplored the behaviourism that has taken root among Jews. They maintained that we must consider our belief structure and relate it to our identity an behaviour, avoiding the easy way of conformism. Our panelists will convey their personal approaches to Judaism and ask can we fight the trend?

Limmud 2017

Rabbi Cardozo lectured and discussed topics that must be of great interest to Friends of Louis Jacobs and to all those interested in religious politics and Torah truths.

Rabbi Nathan Cardozo and Elie Jesner

What makes a great leader and believer a deviant? R Dweck has been labelled, as was R Jacobs as “poisonous.” This discussion looks at the concerns and impact of Rabbinic exclusion.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Rabbi Cardozo “Is the Torah Really from Heaven”

These two videos occupy the bulk of the 2 hour lecture. Unfortunately we were unable to record the whole lecture and are missing the last and important 20 minutes. Anyone with this part recorded, video or audio please do get in touch!

Video 1

Video 2

The Rubens at Limmud 2017

Siyyum and Melaveh Malkah – November 2017

We celebrate the completion of the major part of the Louis Jacobs web site having located, scanned, edited and uploaded all the 500 plus articles of the bibliography. You will watch contributions from those involved in the development including our main editor Ezra Margulies as well as song and supper. This was a relaxed and very enjoyable evening!

Lecture 1 – Havdalah – Chazan Jason Green

Lecture 2 – Ezra Marguiles – Rabbi Danny Newman

Lecture 3 – Elie Jesner – Paula Jacobs – Anne Sommers – Simon Eder (apologies for video)

Lecture 4 – Ivor Jacobs – Siyyum itself Rabbi Jeremy Gordon

60th Anniversary of We Have Reason To Believe

2017 marks sixty years since the publication of Rabbi Louis Jacobs’ seminal work, We Have Reason to Believe.

Lecture 2 – Rabbi Zev Farber

Q and A – Chaired by Simon Eder

Change in English Law and Halacha

Sir Bernard Eder and Rabbi Chaim Weiner

These videos cover the far-reaching discussions between two leading voices from the worlds of both the English judiciary and the Rabbinate.

Q & A

The 1985 Lubavitch New York Library case

Presented by Simon Eder, assisted by Ivor Jacobs

Walk into a Chabad House almost in any part of the world and the late Rabbi Jacobs is held in the highest regard, given his testimony in the court case concerning the ownership of the Chabad library.

This event uncovers the huge controversy surrounding this case that split the family of the man some still consider to be the Messiah. What do we learn of the profound leadership of the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson z”l? Just what lay behind Rabbi Louis Jacobs’ expertise and immense interest in the Lubavitch movement?

Drawing on recently discovered archival material from the trial itself, Simon takes us on a journey charting the history of the movement, unravelling along the way its various power struggles, psychological intrigues and family deceptions! What he asks does the library in question, how it came to be and how it survived say about the Chabad movement.

Judaism and The Land – Holy or Unholy Alliance?

With the birth of modern Zionism, the concept of Jewish nationhood surfaced for the first time in a few millennia, and has since re-shaped Judaism beyond recognition. The Zionist movement initially faced widespread distrust, but over the course of time, succeeded in gaining virtually universal endorsement, particularly since the Shoah. And yet the questions posed by Israel’s emergence remain: how to reconcile Jewish nationalist aspirations with universalism? How to balance the secular with the sacred? Belief in God’s providence with human endeavour? Justice for Jews with the rights of the Arabs?

This event, featuring two leading experts, explores the fragmentation of Judaism since the haskalah and the birth of modern Zionism, with a particular focus on the development of religious Zionism and its relationship to the Land of Israel before and after the 1967 War. We will discover how the religious narrative over the Holy Land has changed over time, whether the concepts of ” Adam” and “Adamah” complement or clash, and how they impact the politics of religious Zionism.

Prof Colin Shindler’s presentation

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Prof David Newman’s presentation

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Q & A 1

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Q & A 2

Beyond the Law – Transitioning from Halakha to Ethics

A lecture by Prof William Kolbrener on 12th February 2016.

A central tension for committed Jews is that between halakhic observance and personal morality, between traditional law and a sense of ethical progress.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik is usually identified with the former positions, as championing ‘Halakhic Man’ and the ‘Halakhic Mind’ over more personal and subjective visions of ethics.  The story, however, is not so straightforward, and it turns out that a careful reading of his work shows him transitioning from a strictly halakhic worldview to a more fluid one wherein ethics is born from the depths of our subjectivity.

This talk will explored this development, considered both the personal and historical circumstances which led Rabbi Soloveitchik to undergo this transition.  It also considered the reasons why this shift has not been fully appreciated, and why the depiction of him as the archetypal ‘halakhic man’ have persisted so strongly in contemporary Jewry.

William Kolbrener is Professor of English Literature at Bar Ilan University in Israel, where he lectures on Renaissance literature, philosophy and theology.  He has written – on the Jewish world – for Haaretz, the Forward, the Washington Post, Commentary, the Jerusalem Post among others venues. His Open Minded Torah: Of Irony, Fundamentalism and Love was published by Continuum in 2012; his new The Last Rabbi: Joseph Soloveitchik and Talmudic Tradition is published by Indiana

One of the most exciting aspects of the educational work of the Louis Jacobs Foundation is the ability to host speakers of the highest calibre from around the world. We were extremely excited to welcome Professor William Kolbrener, a thinker, teacher and writer of the highest order.

Professor Kolbrener was raised in a Reform community in America, and found his way towards an Orthodox community in Israel via Columbia and Oxford Universities.  His spiritual searching was first documented in his book Open Minded Torah, which Rabbi Lord Sacks commended in the following words “When a great and capacious mind, blessed with sensibility and sensitivity, engages in conversation with the timeless texts of Torah, the result is both enlightening and enthralling… All whose Judaism is reflective and thoughtful will be enlarged by it.”

His thought since then has developed and deepened, and has come to perhaps its fullest fruition in his new book on Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, “The Last Rabbi“.  As he says in the introduction, it is not a straightforward work of admiration, but rather “a product first of melancholy disillusionment not only in Soloveitchik but in the current institutions and practices of reading throughout the Jewish world… [it] aspires to provide a more complex critical assessment of Soloveitchik’s work, one that is attentive to the voice that captivated his students (as well as myself), and also to those occluded, even repressed voices, to which scholars have given less attention.”

In the Jewish Chronicle’s review of the book, Rabbi Dr Harvey Belovski sang its praises, reflecting that in “commanding an extraordinary range of sources – where else might Freud, Corinthians, Donne and Adam Phillips share a page in a book about an Orthodox rabbi? – the author… demonstrates that his transition from English professor to polymath is complete.”

Prof. Paul Franks – What do Jews think of Gentiles?

Lecture given on Sunday 13th November 2016 as part of the Honest Theology project.

Many Jews are proud that their Judaism is not exclusivist in the way that some other religions are: non-Jews are not condemned as such; they too are valued by and bonded to God, if not by the Mosaic then by the Noahide covenant. There is also an idea that the righteous among the nations have a place in the world to come. However, there is another less comfortable strand of Jewish thought, which emphasises the difference between the souls of Jews and non-Jews, and sometimes seems to regard non-Jews as made in the likeness but not in the image of God. Some versions of Judaism, far from marginal, are in fact highly exclusivist.

This lecture confronts this line of thinking honestly and openly, and explores whether it might in fact be more nuanced, with some inclusive and universalist ideas emerging alongside the more challenging ones.

Prof. Franks pays particular attention to the thought of Isaiah Horowitz (1565-1630), author of the highly influential Shnei Luhot ha-Berit (Two Tables of the Covenant); to Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86), philosopher and author of the controversial Pentateuch translation, Netivot ha-Shalom (Paths of Peace); Naftali Herz Weisel (1725-1805), poet and author of the notorious open letter, Divrei Shalom ve-Emet (Words of Peace and Truth); and Pinhas Eliyahu Horowitz of Vilna (c.1731-1805), author of Sefer ha-Berit (Book of the Covenant), one of the greatest Jewish best-sellers of the last few centuries.

Main lecture followed by Q & A

Limmud 2015 – Modern Orthodoxy In Crisis: A Reaction Against Fundamentalism?

Limmud Conference, December 2015: A panel discussion featuring Elie Jesner, Rabbi Ysoscher Katz (Chair of the Talmud Department at Yeshivah Chovevei Torah) and Rabbi Lila Kagedan (graduate of Yeshivat Maharat) on fundamentalism within the Modern Orthodox community in the United States, Israel, and England. They commented on the phenomena of ‘labels’, boundaries and identity in Modern Orthodoxy, which appear most notably in the debates on women’s issues in Judaism. The conversation then moved on to cover racism and ultranationalism in contemporary religious Zionism. The panel answered questions from the audience in the last few minutes of the session.

Limmud 2015 – Modern Orthodoxy in Crisis: Moving Forward

Limmud Conference, December 2015: A panel discussion with Elie Jesner, Rabbi Norman Solomon, and Ben Crowne discussing the future of Modern Orthodox Judaism in England. The participants offered insightful comments on the United Synagogue and the brand of Orthodoxy it purports to represent, and discussed the potential for future developments within and beyond the boundaries of the United Synagogue.

Apologies for the sound interference from the next door session!

Limmud 2015 – Do we still have reason to believe?

Limmud Conference, December 2015: Following short introductions by Ivor Jacobs and Ezra Margulies on the general aims of the Friends of Louis Jacobs project, Simon Eder presented, in this session, a concise and articulate analysis of Rabbi Louis Jacobs’s doctrine of liberal supernaturalism, based on a wide array of primary sources.

Four study sessions by Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg held a series of four study sessions to mark the 40th anniversary of the New North London Synagogue. The sessions covered the main theological writings of Rabbi Jacobs. These videos and audio recordings were taken towards the end of 2014 and represent an excellent introduction to Rabbi Jacobs’s thought and his impact on Anglo-Jewry.

First Session

Part 1

Part 2

Second Session

Third Session

Fourth Session

Why and When Halacha Changes – Finding Our Way Back to a Halachic Dynamism in Mainstream Judaism

A dialogue between Rabbi Chaim Weiner, Masorti Av Bet Din and Rabbi Francis Nataf, an Orthodox Jerusalem based educator. This was held in March 2015 and brought up many issues pertinent to the ongoing discussions on the challenges to Centrist Judaism.

Limmud 2014 Sons of Controversial Rabbis – Ivor Jacobs, Julian Levy, David Newman, joined by Ian Gold

From the Limmud Catalogue – The son of the subject of the ‘Jacobs Affair’ and the sons of two Rabbis who backed the rebel, in conversation about their fathers, themselves and the community. Ivor Jacobs, David Newman and Julian Levy explore what influenced their fathers and themselves. They are joined by Ian Gold whose father, also a Minister was sympathetic to Rabbi Jacobs predicament but stayed out of the public debate. This session should provide frank insights into their Judaism and the state of Anglo-Jewry.

Limmud 2014 Personal Reflections on the “Jacobs Affair” and the 50 following years.

From the Limmud Catalogue – The “Controversy” affected community and family. Ivor, supporting his dad, became a Masorti fanatic. In the year that he died Louis Jacobs was hailed as the “greatest Jew.” Ivor then founded www.louisjacobs.org, an educational resource and a “label” barrier breaker. This illustrated session will cover how the controversy continues to impact us.

Jewish Book Week – Miri Freud-Kandel in conversation with James Kugel and Simon Hochhauser – part 1

A conversation between Miri Freud-Kandel from the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, renown Bible scholar James Kugel, and former president of the United Synagogue Simon Hochhauser, during Jewish Book Week in 2013.

The discussion starts off with attempts to frame Modern Orthodoxy historically and ideologically. James Kugel makes some helpful observations about the development of Modern Orthodoxy in Germany and in the United States, before allowing Simon Hochhauser to comment on the values which govern the movement: a sense of steadfast allegiance to halakha combined with a commitment to modernism. Miri Freud-Kandel completed these responses with insights into the philosophies of leading figures in the history of Modern Orthodoxy, highlighting the differences between Samson Raphael Hirsch’s torah im derekh erets, 20th century American versions of torah umadah, and Chief Rabbi Sacks’s torah vehokhmah.

The speakers moved on to the issues of the boundaries of Modern Orthodoxy, rabbinic authority versus individual autonomy, and the different advantages and limitations which arise from placing labels on religious ideologies. Finally, they discussed the political context in which debates surrounding Modern Orthodoxy take place.

In the last ten minutes, the panel answered questions from the audience.

The conversation was highly stimulating, addressing some critical questions raised over the past years in the Orthodox world.

Jewish Book Week – Miri Freud-Kandel in conversation with James Kugel and Simon Hochhauser – part 2

The concluding minutes of the Q&A session between Miri Freud-Kandel, James Kugel, and Simon Hochhauser on Modern Orthodoxy at Jewish Book Week.

Limmud 2012 – Panel on Modern Orthodoxy – part 1

Ivor Jacobs chaired a panel on “Modern Orthodoxy: what’s in a name anyway?” at Limmud, with Daniel Sperber, Yaffa Epstein, and Herzl Hefter as guest speakers. Each member of the panel starts the session off with a short introduction indicating their own views on Modern Orthodoxy. Yaffa Epstein used some personal anecdotes to offer some insights into the tension between authority and individualism. Herzl Hefter followed with some impressions, discussed through the lens of Maimonidean theology, on intellectual honesty on matters which challenge the theological underpinnings of Orthodox beliefs (such as darwinism, biblical criticisim, and so on). Finally, Daniel Sperber outlined two philosophies of Judaism which differ over openess to the surrounding culture and contemporary developments. The conversation which ensued touched on all these themes in great depth, and was followed by a Q&A.

Limmud 2012 – Panel on Modern Orthodoxy – part 2

The concluding minutes of the Limmud panel “Modern Orthodoxy: what’s in a name anyway?” with Ivor Jacobs, Yaffa Epstein, Daniel Sperber, and Herzl Hefter.

Limmud 2013 James Kugel in Discussion with Norman Solomon

What does it mean to believe in divine Torah? How have Jews understood it in the past and what can we make of it today? This video features two leading scholars for a discussion and insights into this central issue on modern Jewish thought.

Rabbi Jeremy Gordon at Masorti Yom Limmud 2104 on Rabbi Jacobs background

Examining the reasons in the make up of Rabbi Jacobs and his early career that led to the stance he took on his religious understanding and values.

Prof. Paul Morris – Louis Jacobs’s “Heretical Sermon” on the Theology of Revelation

Prof. Paul Morris, in this lecture, comments on Louis Jacobs’s lifelong interest in heresy. He focuses particularly on Jacobs’s essay, published in a festschrift in honour of R. Seymour J. Cohen in 1991, on a series of responsa on the topic of heresy written by the late medieval Vilna rabbi Ephraim b. Jacob hakohen (see the essay here).

Prof. Morris reviews extensively the different approaches to heresy espoused by Jewish sages from the late antiquity to the modern period, which often react to contemporary heretics (such as Spinoza or, according to the mitnaggedim, R. Shlomo Zalman of Lyady) and heretical movements (most prominently in Jewish history karaism, sabbateanism, and frankism). He notes, however, that the threat of herem, or excommunication, which accompanied accusations of heresy, was rarely actualized. The speaker then reviews, using sources relating to the “Affair”, the allegations against Jacobs’s heresy and the calls for a formal excommunication issued by certain voices in Anglo-Jewry.

Finally, Prof. Morris examines a sermon entitled ‘Revelation’ delivered by Louis Jacobs at the New London Synagogue in 1964, with the view of considering its content and assessing whether it does constitute heresy or not.

Prof. Michael Fishbane – Images of God

A lecture delivered by Prof. Michael Fishbane on 10th March 2013.

Prof. Fishbane starts with a distinction, first suggested by Franz Rosenzweig, between material and formal images of the divine: the former make statements about God’s body, faculties, or actions; while the latter relate to God on a symbolic level. He then lists a number of material images of God present in the Bible, and discusses the ways in which the Sages negotiated such images in a formalistic fashion in midrashic literature. He shows that although late Antiquity Jews felt bound by the commandment against idols to interpret divine imagery figuratively, they nontheless avoided depicting the deity as absolutely transcendent. They did not hesitate to read the biblical text against the grain, in accordance with their theological orientation, in order to maintain their belief in a personal God. In their view, divine images were linguistic devices designed to educate the individual about God’s nature and actions.

The speaker then moves on to medieval Jewish authors, including Maimonides, the Ravad (Abraham b. David of Posquières), and the author of the Zohar, and their respective, conflicting approaches to the subject of anthropomorphisms and divine imagery. He concludes, finally, with Rosenzweig’s insights, turning the question on its head to discuss the modern Jew’s experience of the divine.

Dr. Miri Freud-Kandel – Is Theology a Good Jewish-ology?

A presentation by Dr. Miri Freud-Kandel from the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the New London Synagogue in December 2011. Dr. Freud-Kandel offers some insights on the place of theology in Judaism and its relationship to ritual and practice.

Judaism is generally seen as an organic, non-systematic religion in which ritual develops from particular historical circumstances rather than theological debate. The absence of sophsticated reflections on the divine in Jewish sources highlights the problem of theology in the Jewish context. In the modern period, Moses Mendelssohn and Samson Raphael Hirsch argued that Judaism was devoid of dogma, and should be characterized by its emphasis on ritual rather than faith. Similarly, Jewish communities around the world tend to privilege political and social concerns over principles of belief. It is worth asking, therefore, whether theology matters at all in Judaism?

Dr. Freud-Kandel explains that Louis Jacobs viewed theology as the individual’s quest to find meaning in their Judaism. Only a sound system of belief, he argued, could successfully secure the individual’s commitment to ritual and encourage the transmission of Judaism to future generations. Yet while insisting on the critical role of theology, Jacobs also recognized the impossibility to construct a definitive Jewish theology, precisely because of his emphasis on the individual. Hence the performance of ritual implies the beliefs in God, covenant, and revelation, gives these abstract concepts a means for practical implimentation. These therefore need to be discussed and refined in order to sustain Jewish practice.

A Q&A session follows the lecture.

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove – The Insoluble Contradictions in the Life and Thought of Louis Jacobs – part 1

A paper delivered by Rabbi Dr. Elliot Cosgrove at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies on Louis Jacobs’s life and thought.

Cosgrove starts by noting that most of Jacobs’s comments on the reconciliation between the authority of Scripture and critical discourse were hardly new. Numerous scholars in the Jewish world, and especially beyond (among Christian circles) in the 1950s, had addressed very similar concerns about divine revelation. What made Louis Jacobs unique was that he also claimed to be an Orthodox rabbi. He demonstrates that Jacobs’s theological outlook, while innovative and surprising in an Orthodox setting, occurred in the midst of far broader developments in the academic world in the 1950s. These included, for example, the philosophical school of logical positivism, the New Jewish theologians in the United States, or the rising popularity of Christian authors such as C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. This background is essential, Cosgrove claims, to a proper understanding of the theology of Rabbi Jacobs.

The speaker then moves on the describe the dynamics at work in Anglo-Jewry, particularly in Manchester, during Jacobs’s childhood years. The successive waves of immigration of Eastern European Jews on the one hand, and the very palpable tendency towards acculturation on the other, shaped Louis Jacobs’s outlook during the formative years of his life. He was described early on as a remarkably gifted student by Eliyahu Dessler, his teacher in yeshivah, where Jacobs was the only native-born student. In parallel, the Zionist movement was at work in England in the 1940s, and represented an additional force at work in the Jewish landscape of the time. Louis Jacobs had a foot in all of these spheres.

Upon moving to London, Jacobs discovered yet new horizons: he took a position as assistant rabbi in Eli Munk’s synagogue, with whom he encountered the world of German neo-Orthodoxy and the Hirschian notion of torah im derekh erets, and enrolled for a doctorate at London University under Dr. Siegfried Stein, a renown German scholar, who introduced him to the critical scholarship on the history of Judaism. Yet in the later stages of his career, Jacobs moved away from the paths set by his former teachers, searching for a synthesis of his own. Finally, Cosgrove notes the influence of Dr. Alexander Altmann, also a German scholar and rabbi, whom Jacobs met in the late 1940s. Altmann also combined traditional erudition and a scholarly approach to Judaism, but in a way that did not satisfy Rabbi Jacobs.

Jacobs was exposed to very different philosophies of Judaism during his upbringing, from which he received the tools to negotiate his own religious outlook as a thinker.

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove – The Insoluble Contradictions in the Life and Thought of Louis Jacobs – part 2

The second part of Rabbi Cosgrove’s lecture, with Q&A, at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

Yarnton Manor Library Visit 6th May 2013

Cesar Merchan-Hammann, the Oxford Centre Librarian, showed visitors the Louis Jacobs exhibition and library. This was part of the open day during the Symposium based on the Thoughts of Rabbi Jacobs.

The Jacobs Affair Revisited – Part 1: Martin Aaron & Judge Kenneth Zucker

An evening of lively debate on the legacy of Rabbi Dr. Louis Jacobs and the impact of the Jacobs Affair at Avenue House in Finchley, organized by B’nai B’rith First Lodge on 5th October 2011, with Judge Kenneth Zucker, QC, Dr. Jonathan Wolfson, Rabbi Chaim Weiner, and Dr. Lionel Kopelowitz.

In this video, the former President of the Lodge, Martin Aaron, offers some introductory comments to the evening’s debate. Judge Zucker then offers some historical and biographical comments on the subject. His presentation covers the Affair, starting with the publication of Rabbi Jacobs’s controversial book, We Have Reason to Believe, and includes some personal comments on the missed opportunity in Anglo-Jewry to appoint an outstanding scholar and theologian at its head. He offers some remarks on the actual content of Rabbi Jacobs’s book, presenting it as an apologetic work written for a religiously committed readership, following in the vein of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed.

The Jacobs Affair Revisited – Part 2: Dr. Lionel Kopelowitz

Part 2 of the debate on the Jacobs Affair organized by B’nai B’rith First Lodge on 5th October 2011 at Avenue House in Finchley, with Dr. Lionel Kopelowitz, former President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Dr. Kopelowitz comments on Rabbi Jacobs’s involvement in the New West End Synagogue. He mentions the doubts held by many congregants at the prospect of hiring a rabbi trained at the Gateshead yeshiva instead of Jews’ College, and then recalls the few changes that Louis Jacobs introduced to the local schedule: Mincha prayers on shabbat and a weekly shiur, the first of a kind in the United Synagogue. The topics discussed during those weekly classes formed the basis of his book We Have Reason to Believe. Rabbi Jacobs’s main weakness, according to Dr. Kopelowitz, was as a politician. He, and many of his followers, failed to understand the politics at work in Anglo-Jewry and the United Synagogue.

The Jacobs Affair Revisited – Part 3: Dr. Jonathan Wolfson

Part 3 of the debate on the Jacobs Affair organized by B’nai B’rith First Lodge on 5th October 2011 at Avenue House in Finchley, with Dr. Jonathan Wolfson, lecturer at the London School of Jewish Studies.

Dr. Wolfson reviews the Orthodox position on the doctrine of Torah min hashamayim and the various efforts made by modern and contemporary Orthodox thinkers to come to terms with the challenge of biblical criticism. He notes that Rabbi Jacobs was the first British rabbi to attempt a synthesis of academic biblical studies and Orthodoxy, first in We Have Reason to Believe and subsequently in numerous other publications.

He also offers some historical context regarding the Jacobs Affair, mentioning the dynamics at work in Anglo-Jewry in the second half of the twentieth century: the impact of the Holocaust; the tumultuous relationship between Chief Rabbi Hertz and Robert Wayley Cohen, President of the United Synagogue; the growth of the power of the Beth Din under the leadership of Dayan Ambramsky; and the appointment of Chief Rabbi Brody, whose schoalrly credentials were somewhat inferior to his predecessor’s. All these factors, Dr. Wolfson explains, combined to create a ‘perfect storm’ at the centre of which stood Louis Jacobs.

The speaker concludes by offering a more nuanced judgment on the Jacobs Affair, noting that while the United Synagogue’s behaviour towards Louis Jacobs was  condemnable, their decision not to appoint him at the head of Jews’ College and future Chief Rabbi was justifiable in light of his beliefs. He argues that it would be inappropriate for someone to hold the highest position in the community while publically holding views which diverge from the mainstream Orthodox position.

The Jacobs Affair Revisited – Part 4: Rabbi Chaim Weiner

Part 4 of the debate on the Jacobs Affair organized by B’nai B’rith First Lodge on 5th October 2011 at Avenue House in Finchley, with Rabbi Chaim Weiner, Av beth din of the European Masorti Beth Din and former rabbi of the New London Synagogue (between 2000-2005).

Rabbi Weiner comments on his personal relationship with Louis Jacobs, and uses this experience to underscore the fact that the main question Jacobs addressed was not necessarily on what to believe in, but how to establish our beliefs. He would always rely on the evidence at hand, and it is on the basis of the evidence put forward by Bible scholars that he came to question the traditional belief in Torah min hashamayim espoused by the United Synagogue. He would always let the facts guide his religious convictions.

Rabbi Weiner also offers some comments on Jacobs’s legacy. He notes that Masorti Judaism is one of the only movements experiencing growth in European Jewry. He also comments on the number of grassroots initiatives taking place in Anglo-Jewry outside the confines of established movements such as the United Synagoge, the Chief Rabbinate, or Reform, all of which were probably influenced by the Jacobs Affair. The common element between these emerging actors on the Jewish scene is their desire to transcend denominational differences and establishment politics.

Prof. Michael Fishbane 13th March 2011

Quest Winter Lecture by Dr. Ed Kessler Part 1

Quest Winter Lecture by Dr. Ed Kessler Part 2

Prof. Michael Fishbane