Word: rabbis
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...worst schism ever-over whether it should adapt to modern life or reject it for the sake of Israel's carefully nourished beliefs. Cause of the schism is the modern-minded theological outlook of Dr. Louis Jacobs, 43, a Biblical scholar who between 1954 and 1960 was rabbi of the New West End Synagogue in Bayswater, a traditional center of worship for many Anglo-Jewish families. Although he is Orthodox in practice, Jacobs has long shocked his bearded rabbinical colleagues in the Orthodox-controlled United Synagogue, Britain's largest Jewish organization, by arguing that the Torah contains human...
Jacobs' modernism might be Chillul Hashem (desecration of God's name) to the United Synagogue, but his views were just right for New West End, which last January asked him to return as its rabbi. Dr. Israel Brodie, the ailing Orthodox chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth, refused to approve the appointment. Eventually the United Synagogue Council, composed exclusively of laymen, voted to expel the New West End board of lay managers...
...Torah which denies the divine source and unity," he said, "is directly opposed to Orthodox Jewish teaching." A number of Jews felt that Brodie was defending not Orthodoxy but fundamentalism; when nearly half of the New West End congregation set up an independent synagogue with Jacobs as rabbi, they received membership applications and offers of help from many Jews outside of London. Last week, in the influential Jewish Chronicle, Jacobs answered the chief rabbi and defended the rebels' liberal approach to the Torah. "If by 'Orthodox' Dr. Brodie means fundamentalist, then indeed I am not Orthodox...
...father," replied Miss Feldman sweetly, "is a rabbi...
...Russians have done all they could to discourage Jewish religious observance. Since 1956 the number of active synagogues has dropped from 450 to 97. There is only one kosher butcher shop and only one seminary for rabbis in all of Russia. Just before Passover last month, the Soviet government expressed its good will toward the Jews by allowing Moscow's chief rabbi to open a special matzo bakery. Two days later, it was closed down as a health hazard, and customs officials confiscated matzos shipped to Russia by American Jews...