Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Jewish Studies
Episode: Harry Freedman, "Reason to Believe: The Controversial Life of Rabbi Louis Jacobs" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Description: Louis Jacobs was Britain's most gifted Jewish scholar. A Talmudic genius, outstanding teacher and accomplished author, cultured and easy-going, he was widely expected to become Britain's next Chief Rabbi.Then controversy struck. The Chief Rabbi refused to appoint him as Principal of Jews' College, the country's premier rabbinic college. He further forbade him from returning as rabbi to his former synagogue. All because of a book Jacobs had written some years earlier, challenging from a rational perspective the traditional belief in the origins of the Torah, the Jewish Bible.The British Jewish community was torn...