We Have Reason to Believe

This book examines the basic beliefs of Judaism in the light of modern thought. Its shape is traditional but not fundamentalist. On the question of God and the Hereafter the challenges are to show that both these beliefs, so central to Judaism, are completely tenable. The doctrine that the Torah came from Heaven is also defended, but only by a more or less radical understanding of what revelation can mean in our world - post-critical and searching for faith but not fundamentalist. First published in 1957, this book was the main cause of 'the Jacobs Affair', in which the author's appointment to an Orthodox Rabbinic position was vetoed by the then Chief Rabbi. The bone of contention was the author's suggestion that the doctrine Torah Min Ha-Shamayyin (The Torah is from Heaven) requires to be reinterpreted - not abandoned - so as not to be in conflict with modern knowledge.