Louis Jacobs

Born in Manchester, England, Louis Jacobs studied at yeshivas in Manchester and Gateshead and later at University College London. After teaching at a London synagogue, he served as rabbi at Manchester’s Central Synagogue from 1948 to 1954 and at London’s New West End Synagogue from 1954 to 1959. From 1959 to 1962, as he was drifting away from strict Orthodoxy, he taught at Jews’ College in London but resigned when he was blocked from succeeding Isidore Epstein as the school’s principal. This bitter crisis was prompted in part by the 1957 publication of his book We Have Reason to Believe. In the aftermath of the crisis, he and some of his congregants broke away to found the New London Synagogue, the Masorti (Conservative) movement’s flagship synagogue.