Archive - Jacob B. Agus Collection

Rabbi Jacob Agus was a leading thinker in the Conservative movement’s liberal wing, heading Rabbinical Assembly committees on the sabbath, prayerbook, and ideology of the Conservative movement. He was also a scholar, teacher, author, editor, long-time rabbi of Beth El Congregation in Baltimore, Maryland, and a promoter of interfaith communication--which he referred to as “dialogue” or “trialogue.”

Agus (the family name was originally Agushewitz), was born in Poland in 1911 and emigrated with his family to the United States in 1927. He attended the Talumdic Academy, New York, graduating in 1929, received his bachelor’s degree from Yeshiva University in 1933, and was ordained by YU in 1935. In 1940 he received a PhD in Jewish Thought from Harvard University and married Miriam Shore the same year. Agus’s rabbinic career took him to Congregation Beth Abraham, Norfolk, Virginia, 1934-1936; Temple Ashkenaz, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1936-1940; Agudas Achim North Shore Congregation, Chicago, 1940-1942; and Beth Abraham United Synagogue Center, Dayton, Ohio, 1942-1950. In 1945 Agus formally affiliated with the Conservative movement by joining the Rabbinical Assembly. In 1950 he became the rabbi of Beth El Congregation in Baltimore, where he remained for thirty years, retiring in 1980.

As an influential member of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, Agus was active in the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, chaired the Prayer Book Committee (1952-1956) and worked to define Conservative Jewish ideology through a series of conferences, committees and other gatherings, including the Continuing Conference on Conservative Ideology (1956-1963). With Morris Adler and Theodore Friedman he co-authored the “Responsum on the Sabbath,” 1950, that allowed Conservative Jews to use electricity and drive on the Sabbath.

As a scholar, Agus produced several books on Jewish philosophy and many articles on this and other themes, and served as an advisor on Jewish topics for encyclopedias, including the Encyclopedia Britannica, and scholarly journals. He taught at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, St. Mary’s Seminary and Ecumenical Institute (where he was also a founder of the Interfaith Roundtable), Temple University, and Dropsie College.

In 1965 Agus accepted an invitation to teach at the Seminario Rabinico Latinoamerico in Buenos Aires. He remained in Argentina for two months, then traveled to Brazil where he spent two weeks lecturing under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee and the Brazilian Institute for Culture and Information. In Latin America Agus developed continuing ties with students and colleagues--among them Marshall Meyer, then director of the Seminario. These ties are documented by the correspondence in this collection.

In addition to his rabbinical and scholarly work, Agus adopted the cause of interfaith and interracial relations, dubbing his forays into Jewish/Christian and Jewish/Christian/Muslim relations “dialogue” and “trialogue.” As noted above, he was a founder of St. Mary’s Seminary’s Interfaith Roundtable. He also served on the boards of the Baltimore National Council on Christians and Jews, and the predominantly African-American Morgan State University, also in Baltimore.

Agus died on September 26, 1986.