On Friday morning, people listening to BBC Radio 4’s popular Today program heard a familiar voice addressing them on “The Thought for the Day” slot. It was Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks making his final appearance. This afternoon, Rabbi Sacks will formally step down from the post he has filled for the last twenty-two years…
Finally, after more than a year of deliberation, the United Kingdom has chosen Ephraim Mirvis to be its new chief rabbi, replacing Lord Jonathan Sacks. Actually, much of that sentence isn’t correct. It isn’t “the United Kingdom” that chooses the chief rabbi. For all its pretensions to established status, the chief rabbinate has only a…
Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has big shoes to fill. Appointed this week as the 11th British chief rabbi, he will succeed Jonathan Sacks, an internationally renowned author and public intellectual who speaks frequently on moral, philosophical and theological affairs. The widespread assumption among British Jews has long been that a Mirvis chief rabbinate would be quite…
As soon as I heard the name of Great Britain’s newly named chief rabbi, I knew it sounded familiar. I met Ephraim Mirvis back in 1986, when I was a foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer based in London, and he was the relatively new chief rabbi of Ireland. I was young for my job….
Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the spiritual leader of one of the largest congregations in London and a former chief rabbi of Ireland, was named Britain’s chief rabbi-designate. The appointment of Mirvis, 55, of the Finchley Synagogue, was announced Monday by the United Synagogue, an umbrella organization for Britain’s 65 Orthodox communities, the Jewish Chronicle reported. He…
100% of profits support our journalism
