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March 28, 2024, 11:47:10 PM

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RIP Louis Jacobs

Started by abbot lau, July 06, 2006, 04:38:08 PM

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abbot lau

He was my family's Rabbi when I was growing up, and all I remember thinking of him then was he seemed a kindly old gent with a beard exactly like Billy Connolly's. His sermons always seemed intelligent and free of rhetoric or hellfire.

Anyway, now I've discovered (from newspaper obits) that he was screwed out of becoming Britain's chief Rabbi in the '60s because he dared to suggest that the Torah was written by men inspired by God rather than by God himself. So he got blacklisted by the fundamentalist Jews and ended up founding his own Synagogue in north London, which is where my family chose to go.

Here's something he said (quoted from the Guardian's obit.)

QuoteThose people who believed everything was written by God also claimed to have seen codes in the Torah, indicating the coming of Aids and Hitler. They were, Jacobs said, talking "nonsense [that] only succeeds in turning the Torah into a book of magic and reduces Judaism to something like an Old Moore's Almanac." This was anathema to fundamentalist Jews, but expressed what most Jews - and, it had to be said, most Orthodox Jews - actually believed.

I bet he didn't think much of the Kaballah thing either. We need more religious leaders like him.

Dusty Gozongas

I'm inclined to reply here but you may not like it ;o)

I miss my old sufi friend and would have posted a similarly unreplied message here if it was then rather than now.

Thinkers are always sadly missed but their wisdom always lives in the people they've touched deeply.

Smile :-)