The New London Synagogue
The defecting congregation purchased the old St. John's Wood synagogue building, and installed Jacobs as its rabbi — a post which he held until 2000 and to which he returned in 2005. This congregation, The New London Synagogue, became the "parent" of the Masorti movement in the United Kingdom, which now numbers several congregations.
While holding the position of Rabbi at the New London Synagogue, Dr. Jacobs was also for many years Lecturer in Talmud and Zohar at the Leo Baeck College, a rabbinical college preparing students to serve as Masorti, Reform and Liberal rabbis in the UK and Europe. Rabbi Jacobs served as Chairman of the Academic Committee for some years.
Since the founding of the New London Synagogue, Jacobs and the Masorti movement were subject to hostility from Orthodox British Jewish institutions. On his 83rd birthday, in the Bournemouth United Synagogue on the sabbath before his granddaughter's wedding, 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. The Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, and the head of the London Beth Din, Dayan Chanoch Ehrentreu, responded that, because of what they considered to be Jacobs's heretical beliefs, "they believed that had Jacobs uttered the words 'Our God who gave us the Torah of truth ', he would have made a false statement".
In December 2005, a poll by The Jewish Chronicle of its subscribers, in which 2,000 readers made their nominations, voted Jacobs the 'greatest British Jew' in the community's 350-year history in England. Jacobs commented "I feel greatly honoured - and rather daft." Nevertheless, reports that Louis Jacobs had been nominated greatest British Jew, received wide press coverage in Britain.
A few months before his death he donated his great book collection to the Leopold Muller Memorial Library at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.
Read more about this topic: Louis Jacobs
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