Overview

For Louis Jacobs, the quest—the process of engaging with and thinking about Jewish faith—was a lifelong pursuit. He offered a model in the 1960s, a period characterized by general religious crisis, of an observant, committed, but intellectually curious Judaism that empowered individual seekers to address challenges to faith. In Orthodox Judaism at the time a battle was under way for religious control. Generating a widespread controversy in British Jewry known as the ‘Jacobs Affair’, his thought offers a lens for examining the trajectory of Orthodoxy. In a contemporary context marked by the changing cultural and intellectual concerns of a ‘post-secular’ age, the focus of some of these debates over religious control has shifted. Yet Jacobs’ emphasis on a personal quest is as relevant as ever, perhaps more so. This first book-length analysis of his theology unpacks the building blocks of his thought. It argues that, despite its particularities and limitations, his approach can provide a powerful model for contemporary religious seekers in the context of a growing impetus away from established, denominationally bound forms of religion. Many orthodox believers across a range of faiths continue to prefer the certainty of unquestionable religious truth claims rather than pursuing a subjective search for religious meaning. For those seeking alternative models for the contemporary Jewish quest, a reconsideration of Jacobs’ theology can offer valuable tools.

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9781906764883

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Reviews

'A major study of an important twentieth-century Jewish thinker and religious leader, whom I was privileged to know and learn from.' David Novak, Fellow of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto

‘A major study of an important twentieth-century Jewish thinker and religious leader, whom I was privileged to know and learn from.’  David Novak, Fellow of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto

Author Information

Miri Freud-Kandel is the Lecturer in Modern Judaism in the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, Fellow in Modern Judaism at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and co-convenor of the Oxford Summer Institute on Modern and Contemporary Judaism. She is the author of Orthodox Judaism in Britain Since 1913: An Ideology Forsaken (2006), co-editor, with Adam S. Ferziger and Steven Bayme, of Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy: The Road Not Taken (2019), and co-editor, with Nicholas de Lange, of Modern Judaism: An Oxford Guide (2005).

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