Louis Jacobs (17 July 1920 – 1 July 2006) was a leading writer and theologian. He was the rabbi of the New London Synagogue in the United Kingdom. He was also the focus in the early 1960s of what became known as "The Jacobs Affair" in the British Jewish community. Early career Jacobs was born on 17 July 1920 in Manchester. He studied at Manchester Yeshiva, and later at the kolel in Gateshead. His teachers included leading Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler. Jacobs was ordained as a rabbi at Manchester Yeshiva. Later in his career, he studied at University College London where he gained his PhD on the topic of The Business Life of the Jews in Babylon, 200–500 CE. Jacobs was appointed rabbi at Manchester Central Synagogue in 1948. In 1954 he was appointed to the New West End Synagogue in London. Jacobs became Moral Tutor at Jews' College, London, where he taught Talmud and homiletics during the last years of Rabbi Dr Isidore Epstein's tenure as principal. By this time, Jacobs had drifted away from the strictly traditional approach to Jewish theology that had marked his formative years. Instead he struggled to find a synthesis that would accommodate Orthodox Jewish theology and modern day higher biblical criticism. Jacobs was especially concerned with how to reconcile modern day Orthodox Jewish faith with the Documentary Hypothesis. His ideas about the subject were outlined in the book, We Have Reason to Believe, which was published in 1957. The work was originally written to record the essence of discussions held on its title's subject at weekly classes given by Jacobs at the New West End Synagogue and resulted at the time in some mild criticism but not in any major censure. We Have Reason to Believe Most of Jacobs' book We Have Reason to Believe deals with such topics as proof of God's existence, pain, miracles, the after-life, and the idea of a "Chosen People", ideas which were not in themselves controversial. Debate on the book was eventually to centre on chapters 6, 7, and 8: The Torah and Modern Criticism, A Synthesis of the Traditional and Critical Views and Bible Difficulties. In these chapters Jacobs took on discussion of "Modern Criticism" of the Bible, more specifically textual analysis of the Torah known as the "Documentary Hypothesis", which suggests that its texts derives from multiple sources, rather than having been given, as Orthodox rabbinical