Beyond Reasonable Doubt

More than forty years have passed since Louis Jacobs first put forward the argument that traditionally observant Jews have no reason to take issue with the results obtained by the historical critics in their investigation into the Bible and the other classical sources of Judaism. As a result of his views, which were first published in the still-controversial text We Have Reason to Believe, the Anglo-Jewish Orthodox hierarchy banned Jacobs from serving as an Orthodox rabbi. In this new book, Louis Jacobs examines afresh all the issues involved. He does so objectively but with passion, meeting the objections put forward by critics from the various trends within the Jewish world, both Orthodox and Reform. In a recent poll conducted by the (London) Jewish Chronicle, Louis Jacobs was chosen as the 'Greatest British Jew.'