Miri Freud-Kandel, Modern Judaism lecturer at Oxford, joins us online with the first book-length analysis of the late New London Synagogue rabbi’s theology.

For Louis Jacobs the process of engaging with and thinking about Jewish faith was a lifelong pursuit – and one that remains relevant almost two decades after his death. In the 1960s, amid general religious crisis, he offered a model of an observant but intellectually curious Judaism that empowered individual seekers to address challenges to faith, sparking the widespread controversy in British Jewry known as the ‘Jacobs Affair’ and the founding of the New London Synagogue.

Miri Freud-Kandel, Modern Judaism lecturer at Oxford, joins us online to unpack the building blocks of his thought with the first book-length analysis of his model, Louis Jacobs and the Quest for a Contemporary Jewish Theology.

Buy a copy of Louis Jacobs and the Quest for a Contemporary Jewish Theology by Miri Freud-Kandel.

This event will last approximately 1 hour, without an interval.

Digital events will take place over Zoom, with an event link sent to bookers 24 hours in advance of the event and a reminder email 30 minutes before the event starts. Ticket holders for digital events will also be sent a link to a recording of the event, available to watch until the end of March.

Book Week 24 Digi-Pass gives access to all 16 online streaming events for £39.50.

About the speakers:

Miri Freud-Kandel is 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).