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The Twelveth Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture by Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo
By Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo of Jerusalem Highly acclaimed internationally as one of the most thoughtful and challenging voices in contemporary Orthodox Judaism. A prophetic and profound teacher. “Radical, Brilliant, Controversial!” Lecture Sunday, July 15th 2018 Halachic Courage, Bold Ideas And Religious Authenticity How to Liberate Orthodox Judaism Horn Stagnation and Confinement Panel Monday,…...
The Eleventh Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture by Benjamin Sommer
What Really Happened At Sinai? By Professor Benjamin Sommer of JTS 16 July 2017 Professor Sommer focuses on the theologically significant ambiguities in Exodus 19-20 and how they give rise to an interpretive debate that begins in Deuteronomy 4-5 and continues through midrashic literature, the medieval commentators and into Hasidism and modern Jewish thought. This powerful…...
The Seventh Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture by Lawrence Kaplan
Bastardy
Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle, 23 April 1971. “No mamzer (bastard) shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord; none of his descendants, even in the tenth generation, shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 23: 3). The Rabbis understood this to mean that the issue of an illegal sexual union…...
The Ninth Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture by Karen Armstrong
Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence By Karen Armstrong 21 June 2015 Quest were delighted that Karen Armstrong, one of the world’s leading commentators on religious affairs, made a return visit. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun in the 1960s, and then read English at St Anne’s College, Oxford. Her books…...
The Eighth Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture and 50th Anniversary of the New London Synagogue
The Agenda of Masorti Judaism By Jeremy Gordon, New London Synagogue 17 June 2012 On the occasion of the New London Synagogue’s 50th anniversary and for the Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture, Rabbi Jeremy Gordon delivers a superb address on the values espoused by Rabbi Dr. Louis Jacobs and which inspired the founding of Masorti Judaism and New…...
The Sixth Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture by Jonathan Wittenberg
An Agenda for the Masorti Movement By Jonathan Wittenberg, New North London Synagogue 6th Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture, delivered by Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg at the New London Synagogue in 2012. Rabbi Wittenberg presents an agenda for Masorti, through which adherents, originating within a modern outlook, could recreate and re-envisage traditional Judaism. He tackles this through…...
The Fourth Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture by Norman Solomon
Making Talmud Make Sense By Norman Solomon, University of Oxford 20th June 2010 4th Annual Louis Jacobs Memorial Lecture, delivered by Rabbi Dr. Norman Solomon at the New London Synagogue in 2010. Rabbi Solomon starts his lecture by sharing some personal memories about Louis Jacobs and the Affair, before delving into the nature of the Talmud…....
Marriage in Jewish law
Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle. It is elementary in Jewish law that a valid marriage results from the delivery, in the presence of two witnesses, of an object of value by the groom to the bride with a declaration to that purpose (Maimonides, “Hilchot Ishut,’ I, 1). Cohabitation is only permitted after a valid marriage…...
The 1972 Election: A View from England
Originally published in Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility, 2/38 (29 September 1972), pp. 137-9. It would be a gross impertinence for one who is not an American citizen and ignorant of the American political scene to offer opinions on the specific problems raised by the Nixon vs. McGovern issue. But may I offer some thoughts…...
Women in Synagogues
Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle, 9 June 1972, p. 22. The news that the Chief Rabbi had apparently given his unqualified approval to women serving on the boards of management of synagogues must have been received with acclaim in many circles as evidence of a new and more progressive spirit which the Anglo-Jewish community has…...
The feminine and the divine
Originally published in the Jewish Chronicle, 18 February 2000. A strategy by which Jewish feminists have sought to refute the allegation that Judaism is a purely masculine religion, in which God is always addressed as “He,” never as “She,” has been to call attention to the Kabbalistic understanding of the Shechinah, according to which one of…...