19 Facts About Louis Jacobs

Louis Jacobs was a leading writer, Jewish theologian, and rabbi of the New London Synagogue in the United Kingdom.

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

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

Louis 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.

Louis Jacobs was especially concerned with how to reconcile modern-day Orthodox Jewish faith with the documentary hypothesis.

Specifically, Louis 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.

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

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

Louis 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".

Louis Jacobs concludes that, even if the documentary hypothesis is partly correct,.

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 [Louis Jacobs's] published views".

The events in 1964 that came to be known as "the Louis 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 Louis Jacobs himself was a willing participant in the affair.

Louis Jacobs was dragged into it by the religious establishment of the day.

When Louis Jacobs wished to return to his pulpit at the New West End Synagogue, Brodie vetoed his appointment.

Rabbi Louis Jacobs served as Chairman of the Academic Committee for some years.

On his 83rd birthday, in the Bournemouth United Synagogue on the sabbath before his granddaughter's wedding, Louis Jacobs was not provided the honour of an aliyah customarily given to the father of the bride, which gave rise to heated correspondence in the Jewish press including accusations of pettiness and vindictiveness.

Louis Jacobs testified on behalf of the Chabad Lubavitch movement during the Chabad library controversy.

Louis Jacobs died on 1 July 2006 and is buried at Western Cemetery alongside his wife Sophie.