Customer Reviews
Outstanding Study - By: Emunah (New York), 07 Dec 2008 
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 & gravitas who have been honored by their monarch & looked up to by their government. Many early attempts to centralize US Jewryin 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, & elsewhere across the globe, congregations are formed & financed by local bodies which hire & fire their rabbis. If the synagogue does not serve their needs, they establish new ones that will. How, & why, did the British create a Chief Rabbinate - & how has it coped over the past century & a halfin an increasingly polarizing & divisive religious climate? Well, this story has never been fully told - until now.
Persoff's magnum opus, Faith Against Reason, is a brilliant account of the battles fought by Britain's Chief Rabbis against those - both within the United Synagogue (once the largest congregational body of Jewsin Britain) & Reform, & 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, writtenin an accessible & flowing style which keeps the reader riveted to the page. We get to meet & understand the central figures & their rolesin history, & are struck by the intensity of the debates among the different factions of Anglo-Jewry.
In this outstanding study, 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 & continuity offers lessons from which all can learn. The saga is told the way it happened, without skewing the arguments or adding subjective opinions - & the history is complete, dramatic, & often heart-wrenching.
Compulsive reading - By: Objective Observer, 27 Nov 2008 Meir Persoff, a veteran journalist & chronicler of the Anglo-Jewish community, has provided the best & most comprehensive study to date of the various schisms between Orthodoxy & the liberalising tendencyin Britain. His book spans a period of 150 years & reflects the strenuous efforts of five Chief Rabbis -- Nathan Marcus Adler, Hermann Adler, Joseph Hertz, Israel Brodie & Immanuel Jakobovits -- to hold that tendency at bay, & with it the growth of religious pluralismin Britain.
This most informative, thoroughly researched & meticulously annotated chronicle of the Orthodox-Progressive struggle makes compulsive reading & 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 & archive material that the author quotesin full, it commends itself also to those who are interestedin getting behind the news & learning more about the characters & personalities of the religious leadership of the period, the inordinate stresses & strains with which they had to contend, & the political intrigue that surrounded the protagonists of "faith" & "reason", respectively.
flawed attempt - By: nedley, 25 Nov 2008 
With this book there was a real opportunity for Persoff to show some independence & move away from hagiographically supporting orthodoxy & the United Synagogue, but his own background ultimately proved too large a stumbling block.
It was the blinkered attitude of successive Chief Rabbis to any alternate viewpoints that drove many from mainstream orthodoxy - & not just to the Reform or Liberal. Even today the United Synangogue has no answer to the current rush to fundamentalism, although this period is not part of the book's remit.
Persoff attempts to meld his skill as a journalist with the research abilities of an experienced scholar, but cannot do both, & therefore fails.
