Around 3,000 mourners yesterday attended a special service at Hendon United Synagogue for Lord Jakobovits (78), a former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, who died earlier in the day. Following the service, the coffin was taken to Heathrow Airport for burial in Israel.
As Dr Immanuel Jakobovits (78) he was Chief Rabbi of Britain from 1967 to 1991. He was the first holder of the post to be knighted while in office and the first to be given a peerage.
Born in Konigsburg, East Prussia, in 1921, he was named after the philosopher Immanuel Kant. He fled from Berlin, where his family then lived, after the rise of Hitler.
At 27 he became the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, and he later moved to the US, where was the founder rabbi of New York's Fifth Avenue Synagogue.
In 1967, he returned to Britain as chief rabbi. He was the religious leader to whom Margaret Thatcher was closest and their mutual respect was well known. In 1993 he was at the centre of a storm for saying that genetic engineering should be used to prevent the birth of homosexual children.
He married a rabbi's daughter, Amelie Munk, in 1949. The couple had six children - two sons and four daughters - and more than 30 grandchildren.
