INDISPENSABLE (Journal of Jewish Studies, Oxford):
[Dr Persoff] is fascinated by the ramifications of many a communal story... Historically and thematically, his new volume, "Faith Against Reason: Religious Reform and the British Chief Rabbinate, 1840-1990" (Vallentine Mitchell, London), provides important data from Adler to Sacks, including racy vignettes, colourful events and bitter encounters. Among many topics, it deals with such personalities as Simeon Singer, Morris Joseph and Joseph Hochman, relates how Jews' College was almost relocated to Oxford or Cambridge, and explains the early years of the Hampstead Synagogue and the controversial status of the Reform and Liberal communities within the Board of Deputies... Future historians who wish to paint a judicious, multi-faceted and comprehensive account of the history of the Jews in the modern United Kingdom, and to relate the emergence of contemporary Anglo-Jewry to broader developments in the larger Jewish world and non-Jewish society beyond, will find [it] nothing short of indispensable.
GROUND-BREAKING (Jewish Political Studies Review, Jerusalem and Baltimore):
Meir Persoff's informative and enlightening study shows how successive Chief Rabbis, in their effort to prevent schism, fell into the trap of confusing Jewish unity with religious uniformity. A well-known author, journalist and former editor on the influential weekly, the Jewish Chronicle, he brings an insider's knowledge of, and insight to, the workings and history of the Anglo-Jewish community and its religious leadership. Describing the history of the rabbinate and the community elegantly and cogently, Faith Against Reason is a ground-breaking work, the first of its kind to make extensive use of untapped archive material, especially private correspondence ... Is it likely to attract readers outside the British Commonwealth? The answer may be found in the growing number of American scholars, such as Todd M. Endelman and Lloyd P. Gartner, who have become experts in one period or another of Anglo-Jewish history. Clearly, Dr Persoff's book will provide material for researchers throughout the world in years to come.
COMPULSIVE (Jewish Chronicle, London):
Meir Persoff, a veteran journalist and chronicler of the Anglo-Jewish community, has provided the best and most comprehensive study to date of the various schisms between Orthodoxy and the liberalising tendency in Britain. His book spans a period of 150 years and reflects the strenuous efforts of five Chief Rabbis -- Nathan Marcus Adler, Hermann Adler, Joseph Hertz, Israel Brodie and Immanuel Jakobovits -- to hold that tendency at bay, and with it the growth of religious pluralism in Britain.
This most informative, thoroughly researched and meticulously annotated chronicle of the Orthodox-Progressive struggle makes compulsive reading and will be of immense benefit to historians of Anglo-Jewry, as well as to those who better wish to understand the background to the current religious divide.
Because of the copious correspondence, sermonic references, press reports and archive material that the author quotes in full, it commends itself also to those who are interested in getting behind the news and learning more about the characters and personalities of the religious leadership of the period, the inordinate stresses and strains with which they had to contend, and the political intrigue that surrounded the protagonists of "faith" and "reason", respectively.
EXTRAORDINARY (Manna: The Forum for Progressive Judaism):
The publication of Persoff's widely acclaimed work gives a further opportunity to reflect on the role and relevance of the Chief Rabbinate. His readable and balanced analysis [examines] the efforts of the Chief Rabbis to cope with change, from the accession of Nathan Adler in 1845 -- only four years after the founding of the West London Synagogue of British Jews (Reform) -- to the retirement of Immanuel Jakobovits in 1991. Persoff spent four decades on the editorial staff of the Jewish Chronicle and, as one might expect of such a senior journalist, his thorough research opens up the role of the Office of the Chief Rabbi, and the disputatious nature of the British Jewish community, in an extraordinary, novel and -- for some, perhaps -- even shocking manner. If his volume teaches one thing, it is that the Chief Rabbi's Office was established, and maintained, to create a façade of unity. Nevertheless, behind the façade -- as Persoff's book eloquently demonstrates -- there was a real battle by the Chief Rabbinate to prevent incursions from the Left and the Right, leading Jakobovits to concede on his retirement that "unity turned out to be a mirage." Will the Office of the Chief Rabbi continue to create that mirage, or will it fulfil its real potential, as the leader of a large constituency in British Jewry, by recognising the role of the leaders of other sections within the community?
A GREAT BOOK (Charles Corman, Trustee, Jewish Book Council):
Faith Against Reason is a great book and a great achievement. Other histories of modern British Jewry will need to take account of -- and will be strengthened by -- Persoff's revelations.
TREASURE-TROVE (Todd M. Endelman, William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Michigan):
Religious strife remains a hallmark of the Anglo-Jewish community, and Persoff’s book is a treasure-trove of primary sources illuminating how British Jewry arrived at this point. It sheds light on episodes both well-known and obscure, elucidating what was at stake in each. It strives for objectivity, forswearing both hagiography and polemic, wisely leaving the reader to reach his or her own judgment.
SUPERB -- A GEM (Elkan Levy, former president of the United Synagogue):
Faith Against Reason is superb, a complicated story extremely well told. Meir Persoff is an experienced journalist, and this is demonstrated throughout the book to its overall advantage. Drawing together a vast mass of unexplored material, it is a major contribution to the history of our community – a great attraction to the general reader, a gem for the Anglo-Jewish history buff, and an indispensable tool for the serious historian of British Jewry.
MONUMENTAL (Jerusalem Post, Israel):
To the outsider -- the non-Jew in Britain and the Jew in the rest of the world -- Anglo-Jewry must seem like a haven of tranquillity and unity, broken only by the infamous "Jacobs affair" in the 1960s, when an Orthodox rabbi was barred from becoming principal of Jews' College because he dared to question the principle of the divine origin of the Torah. But Faith Against Reason, Meir Persoff's monumental book examining (as its subtitle indicates) "religious reform and the British Chief Rabbinate 1840-1990," shows just how untranquil and disunited the community was -- and, to a large extent, still is. While that disunity manifested itself only occasionally to the wider public, behind the scenes there was constant bickering, verging at times on bitterness and personal vindictiveness.
The root cause was the creation and rise of non-Orthodox Jewry, with its attempt to satisfy and appeal to those who found the rigidity of Orthodoxy unattractive at best and totally unacceptable at worst. And at the centre of the 160-year battle to keep the community united was the Chief Rabbi of the day. Whoever he was and whatever his background -- and many of the early Chief Rabbis came from continental Europe -- he had an impossible task. Indeed, no less a figure than the Prime Minister of the day, Lord Palmerston -- who offered 10 Downing Street as a venue for a conciliatory meeting between the minister of the West London (Reform) Synagogue, David Woolf Marks, and the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the famous Sir Moses Montefiore -- commented: "Sir Moses, we can't maintain orthodoxy in the Church; why should you expect to do so in the Synagogue?" That "obsession with communal unity," commented the community's penultimate Chief Rabbi, the late Lord (Immanuel) Jakobovits, was "a peculiarly Anglo-Jewish trait."
Persoff spent four decades on the editorial staff of the Jewish Chronicle, one of his posts being editor of its Judaism section. That gave him an informed platform from which to write this book. Although now living in Israel, he travelled to London on several occasions in its preparation, utilising extensively the contemporary reports, correspondence and editorials of that paper, as well as the archives of numerous Jewish institutions (and also institutions in Israel and America). The result is a fascinating and revealing religious history of Anglo-Jewry in which his own views -- and he approaches the subject as an Orthodox Jew -- rarely if ever intrude. The book, he writes in the preface, is offered "as an extensive excursus into the frailty and fragility of communal relationships," examining the "how as well as the why, allowing the key protagonists to speak for themselves."
English-born and educated Dr Israel Brodie had to face the problem not only of the formation of a Reform beth din but also the growing prominence -- nurtured by the JC and its editor, the late William Frankel -- of Rabbi Louis Jacobs, an outstanding scholar and teacher, whose subsequent banishing to the margins of Anglo-Jewry stemmed from his questioning, in a book entitled We Have Reason to Believe, the principle of Torah min hashamayim (divine revelation). His appointment as principal of Jews' College, the training-ground for Britain's Orthodox rabbis, was blocked and led eventually to his breakaway from the United Synagogue and the formation of the independent Orthodox New London Synagogue.
Echoes of the affair were still heard during the reign of Jakobovits, who spoke of Jacobs's "increasing detachment from the Orthodox rabbinical world." The new Chief Rabbi, however, set out with good intentions towards Reform and Liberal Judaism, expressing the desire to create "a new atmosphere of friendliness, trust and goodwill," and noting that his main challenge would be not Reform but secularism. He would, he pledged, "seek to befriend those who dissent." These included, Persoff reveals, Jacobs himself, with whom Jakobovits conducted a hitherto unknown "cloak-and-dagger" meeting. But by the end of his tenure in office, "there was little left of the bridges of understanding." That was the legacy he unwittingly left to his successor, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, appointed in 1991 and still only 60. Sacks has already faced many challenges from non-Orthodox circles and when his period in office finally ends, I look forward hopefully to reading Persoff's assessment of how he handled them.
DRAMATIC AND HEART-WRENCHING (Emunah Magazine, New York):
American Jews -- who have no such leadership structure -- have often marveled at how well the British Jewish community appears to have fared under successive Chief Rabbis, personalities of dignity and gravitas who have been honored by their monarch and looked up to by their government. Many early attempts to centralize US Jewry in such a way came to nothing. Nor can Americans fathom why a community should agree to direct a goodly portion of its financial resources to a central authority that is often at odds with its own lay leaders.
In the United States, congregations are formed and financed by local bodies which hire and fire their rabbis. If the synagogue does not serve their needs, they establish new ones that will. How, and why, did the British create a Chief Rabbinate -- and how has it coped over the past century and a half in an increasingly polarizing and divisive religious climate? Well, this story has never been fully told -- until now.
Persoff's magnum opus, Faith Against Reason, is the first detailed account of the battles fought by Britain's Chief Rabbis against those -- both within the United Synagogue (once the largest congregational body of Jews in Britain) and Reform, and among the yeshivah-trained rabbis to the right -- who continued to question their ecclesiastical authority. Four years of solid research has created the definitive history of British Jewry's religious life, written in an accessible and flowing style which keeps the reader riveted to the page. We get to meet and understand the central figures and their roles in history, and are struck by the intensity of the debates among the different factions of Anglo-Jewry.
Persoff has opened up a world that many have until now poorly understood. How the British Jewish community has confronted -- successfully or otherwise -- the crucial issues of pluralism, inclusivism and continuity offers lessons from which all can learn. The saga is told the way it took place, without skewing the arguments or adding subjective opinions -- and the history is complete, dramatic, and often heart-wrenching.
ADMIRABLY BALANCED (Liberal Judaism Today, United Kingdom):
This is an exhaustive, well-written and admirably balanced history of five United Synagogue chief rabbis from Nathan Marcus Adler to Immanuel Jakobovits, and their turbulent relations not only with the Reform and Liberal movements, but even more so with their own clergy and lay leaders. Reading the book left me with two abiding impressions. First, how smug, small-minded and pompous all the incumbents were, or became, typified by the chutzpah of Jakobovits in paraphrasing Winston Churchill in his induction sermon: "I have not become Anglo-Jewry's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of British Judaism." And second, how convinced they were that their divine mandate was to set themselves against any glimmerings of religious reform from within or without. Zealous for a traditional Judaism that fewer and fewer of their congregants were observing, they strenuously resisted pressure from their lay officers for modest innovations like shortening Sabbath services or compromising over Progressive representation at the Board of Deputies. Inevitably, that forced them into ever closer embrace with the Orthodox far right. As Persoff amply demonstrates, it is no job for a nice Jewish boy wanting to retain probity, dignity, reputation and peace of mind.
CLASSIC PAGE-TURNER (Impressed Expatriate, USA):
Having spent my early years in London in the 1950s and 60s, I was only vaguely aware of the conflicts between the different religious sects described by Meir Persoff in this comprehensive and page-turning volume, which covers a schismatic period in modern Anglo-Jewish history. As an accomplished writer and recognized scholar, Persoff has taken a complex chain of events and broken it down into an easily understandable and immensely readable story, enabling a ready grasp of the intricacies and issues involved in the frequent and never-ending controversies. The wide use of quotations from documents and contemporary publications affords the reader a unique insight -- against their historical background -- into the flavor, atmosphere and personalities in each of the five Chief Rabbinical reigns discussed in the book.
Kudos are due to the author for his mammoth and supremely well-researched study. The outcome is truly an eye-opener to all who were previously unfamiliar with the scope and range of leadership issues facing the Anglo-Jewish community over two centuries -- and still swirling around to this day. Persoff's book will unquestionably become a classic -- an indispensable reference work in universities, synagogues and libraries, and, not the least, on the shelves of every informed and inquiring household.
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