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Jacob Bernard Agus (November 8, 1911 – September 26, 1986) was a Polish-born American liberal Conservative rabbi and theologian who played a key role in the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly. Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors to Our Descendants By Elliott N Dorff, especially chapters 2 and 4Mordecai Waxman, ed., Tradition and Change (New York: Burning Bush Press, 1958)
Agus's rabbinic career included 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 a member of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly he 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 1950 Responsum on the Sabbath that allowed Conservative Jews to drive to a synagogue on the Sabbath if there was none within walking distance. He taught at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, St. Mary's Seminary and Ecumenical Institute (where he was also a founder of the Interfaith Roundtable), and at both Temple University and Dropsie College in Philadelphia. In 1965, he 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, he developed continuing ties with students and colleagues – among them Marshall Meyer, then director of the Seminario. These ties are documented by 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." 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. Professor Steven Katz described him as "a remarkable American Rabbi and scholar, illuminating Agus' commitment to Jewish people everywhere, his profound and unwavering spirituality, his continual reminders of the very real dangers of pseudo-Messianism and misplaced romantic zeal, and his willingness to take politically and religiously unpopular stands."Katz, S.T. (1997) American Rabbi: The Life and Thought of Jacob B. Agus New York: New York University Press; Katz, S.T. (1997) The Essential Agus: The Writings of Jacob B. Agus, New York: New York University Press; .
Rosenzweig’s view was remarkable, in that, the Christian community was engaged in fulfilling Israel's mission. The people Israel are like the sun; the Christian community was the effluence of Divine rays permeating the nations with the spirit of monotheism. The boundary line between Judaism and Christianity was not along the plane of intellectual thought, since the divine being could only be caught figuratively or symbolically within the meshes of human reason.Agus, Dialogue and Tradition; The Challenges of Contemporary Judeo-Christian Thought, pp. 492–493.
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