Louis Jacobs - Early Career

Early Career

Jacobs studied at Manchester Yeshivah, and later at the kolel in Gateshead. His teachers included leading Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler. Jacobs was ordained as a rabbi at Manchester Yeshivah. 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 BCE. 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 published in the book, We Have Reason to Believe, in 1957. The book 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 was the subject at the time of some mild criticism, but not of any major censure.