Rabbi Jacobs begins by discussing AJ Heschel. He first considers his formative influences, which included his hasidic childhood, the Baal Shem Tov, the writings of the Kotsker rebbe and German secular culture. Peppered as always with anecdotes, personal recollections and quotations from his prodigious memory, Rabbi Jacobs then offers insights into Heschel’s personality and behaviour…...

Rabbi Jacobs offer his person reflections on three leading Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. He begins by recounting a public exchange he had with Emmanuel Levinas at a symposium they both attended. Their dispute was about religious tolerance in the pre-modern age and the application of the Talmud to modern philosophy. He then turns…...

On a visit to London, Rabbi Dr Elliot Cosgrove of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York took the opportunity to interview Rabbi Jacobs. They first discuss the influences on Rabbi Jacobs’s thought, particularly the differences between his yeshiva and university experiences and his teachers. Rabbi Cosgrove then asks Rabbi Jacobs how he would characterise…...

This is a talk given by Rabbi Jacobs after he had retired from his role as the rabbi of the New London Synagogue, when he felt more able to express his personal views more freely. Taking his cue from a controversy in the United Synagogue over the appointment of a Lubavitch rabbi to a communal…...

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This video is based on a book of Rabbi Jacobs’s jottings. Here he discusses the use of the Bible for semi-magical purposes, known as bibliomancy, and particularly the Lottery of the Vilna Gaon. The technique involves turning seven pages of the bible and reading the seventh line. It is similar to a seventeenth century Anglo…...

Rabbi Jacobs first discusses one book in each of his three specialist fields of theology, mysticism, and Talmud. His choice for theology is Maimonides’s Guide to the Perplexed. However, Rabbi Jacobs owns up to the fact that he is not overly keen on Maimonides, largely because his medieval views are rooted in Greek philosophy. He…...

In this video, Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs discusses the two ceremonies associated with the birth of a baby boy; the circumcision and the redemption ceremony of a first born son. Drawing, as ever, on his extensive command of sources and stories, he explores the rationale behind the circumcision ritual and its details. He discusses Maimonides’s…...

At the New London Synagogue the latest of the books written by Rabbi Jacobs....