Chief Rabbinical leadership under the spotlight

Meir Persoff analyses the leadership of the Chief Rabbi
From The Jewish Chronicle
Candice Krieger
May 8, 2009

Veteran journalist Meir Persoff has gained a doctorate for his studies on the Chief Rabbinate — past and present.

Dr Persoff, who spent four decades at the Jewish Chronicle, was awarded the PhD from Middlesex University for his book, Faith Against Reason: Religious Reform and the British Chief Rabbinate, 1840-1990 — a study of the battles between Orthodoxy and the liberalising tendency within Anglo-Jewry — and a follow-up dissertation.

Titled Another Way, Another Time, the dissertation explores the Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks’s leadership, examining calls for the abolition of the Chief Rabbinate. Dr Persoff tells People: “My work reflects the strong emotions among non-Orthodox and secular Jews to the left, and the right-wing community, over whether the Chief Rabbi represents them, or ever did.”