Louis Jacobs

Louis Jacobs (17 July 1920 – 1 July 2006) was a leading writer, Jewish theologian, and rabbi of the New London Synagogue in the United Kingdom.

Jacobs was born in Manchester on 17 July 1920.

He studied at Manchester Yeshiva, and later at the kolel in Gateshead.

His teachers included leading Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler.

Jacobs was ordained as a rabbi at Manchester Yeshiva.

Later in his career, he studied at University College London where he gained his PhD on the topic of The Business Life of the Jews in Babylon, 200–500 CE.

Jacobs was appointed rabbi at Manchester Central Synagogue in 1948.

In 1954, he was appointed to the New West End Synagogue in London.

Jacobs became Moral Tutor at Jews' College, London, where he taught Talmud and homiletics during the last years of Rabbi Dr Isidore Epstein's tenure as principal.

By this time, Jacobs had drifted away from the strictly traditional approach to Jewish theology that had marked his formative years.

Instead, he struggled 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 outlined in the book, We Have Reason to Believe, which was published in 1957.

The work was originally written to record the essence of discussions held on its title's subject at weekly classes given by Jacobs at the New West End Synagogue, and resulted in some mild criticism (but not in any major censure) at the time.

Most of Jacobs' book titled We Have Reason to Believe deals with such topics as proof of God's existence, pain, miracles, the afterlife, and election: ideas which were not in and of themselves controversial.

Debate on the book was eventually to centre on chapters 6, 7, and 8: The Torah and Modern Criticism, A Synthesis of the Traditional and Critical Views and Bible Difficulties.

In these chapters, Jacobs took on discussion biblical criticism.

Specifically, Jacobs was concerned with source criticism of the Torah and the documentary hypothesis; the latter of which suggests that the Torah derives from multiple sources rather than having been given, as Orthodox rabbinical traditions have it, complete in its present form by God to Moses during the period beginning on Mount Sinai and ending with Moses's death.

Jacobs comments: "While Judaism stands or falls on the belief in revelation, there is no 'official' interpretation on the way in which God spoke to man".

He writes that, "according to some rabbis, [the Pentateuch] was given to Moses at intervals during the sojourn in the Wilderness".

He also comments that, given the arguments of textual criticism, "no work of Jewish apologetics, however limited in scope, can afford to fight shy of the problem".

Here there is an implied rebuke of the tendency of many Jewish authorities of the period simply to gloss over the inconveniences of the thoughts of the "modern critics" – a rebuke which may have rankled some.

Jacobs concludes: "There is nothing to deter the faithful Jew from accepting the principle of textual criticism".

He is aware that "to talk about 'reconciling' the Maimonidean idea and the Documentary Hypothesis […] is futile, for you cannot reconcile two contradictory theories. But to say this is not to preclude the possibility of a synthesis between the old knowledge and the new knowledge".

Jacobs provides numerous examples from the Talmud and other rabbinical writings indicating acceptance of the idea of Divine intervention in human affairs with "God revealing his Will not alone to men but through men".

He concludes that, even if the Documentary Hypothesis is partly (or even entirely) correct,

"God's power is not lessened because He preferred to co-operate with His creatures in producing the Book of Books […] We hear the authentic voice of God speaking to us through the pages of the Bible […] and its message is in no way affected in that we can only hear that voice through the medium of human beings."

It had been widely assumed that after Epstein's retirement as principal of Jews' College he would be succeeded by Jacobs.

He was also the focus in the early 1960s of what became known as the "Jacobs Affair" in the British Jewish community.

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 newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle, took up the issue and turned it into a cause célèbre which was reported in the national press, including The Times.

It was an event that threatened to become the biggest schism in Anglo-Jewish history.

The events in 1964 that came to be known as "the Jacobs Affair" dominated not just the Jewish media but the whole of Fleet Street and the newsrooms of both the BBC and ITN.

Not that Jacobs himself was a willing participant in the affair.

He was dragged into it by the religious establishment of the day.

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.

Public interest in Dr. Jacobs's differences with the Anglo-Jewish establishment is also demonstrated by the television interview of Dr. Jacobs of 1966 conducted by Bernard Levin.

The defecting congregation purchased the old St John's Wood synagogue building, and installed Jacobs as its rabbi – a post which he held until 2001 and to which he returned in 2005.