"Toward the Formulation of Guiding Principles for the Conservative Movement" — Mordecai Kaplan's 1949 speech, 60 years later

“The establishment of the State of Israel is the second challenge of the modern world to the survival of Judaism. The first challenge came about 150 years ago, with our emancipation from political and economic thralldom and with our admission into the body politic of western mankind. We have not yet recovered from the impact of that first challenge.” ¹

— Rabbi Mordecai Menahem Kaplan, "Toward the Formulation of Guiding Principles for the Conservative Movement," delivered Dec. 6, 1949 to the Rabbinical Assembly

Sixty years ago, Mordecai Kaplan delivered a speech to the Rabbinical Assembly, echoing his vision for the future of the Conservative Movement, indeed it could be read for the future of the Jewish people writ-large. I return to this text often, particularly the above quote. Its lasting relevance pushes me forward, ever-conscious of living a modern Jewish life, filled with the challenges and opportunities inherent in living autonomously and bound to tradition all in one, of living committed to the American Jewish community and simultaneously pulled toward Zion.

For all that Kaplan’s detractors vocally struggled with his philosophical and tangible enunciation of how modern Jews should relate with God and mitzvot/ritual commandments (and I have my qualms, as well), his vision for Jewish community, the “Israel” component of the “God, Torah, Israel” Jewish thought trifecta, was unmatched during his life, and still provides lasting guidance.

Before the speech, Kaplan’s antagonists, going all the way up to the Chancellor of the Seminary, were quite nervous about how people would receive his words. While an outsider for his entire career among the Seminary faculty, epitomized by the unanimous letter of castigation after the publication of The New Haggadah, within the wider rabbinic community, he was the leader of a broad movement.

Despite being a pariah where he worked , Kaplan made policies for the movement both because he was an innovative thinker with impeccable homiletical talents and he spoke up when others did not; with a following of students from 1909-1961 at the Seminary and presence throughout the Jewish communal superstructure, he commanded the attention of his enthusiasts and those who respected him for being their teacher, alike. In 1942, Robert Gordis noted this fact explicitly:

“Only slowly and painfully has a literature on Conservative Judaism been growing up, and it is noteworthy how much of it has arisen as a reaction to the ideas which Doctor Kaplan has presented. Thus both those who accept his point of view in toto, as well as those who are unable to share it in large areas of thought are his are his disciples, drinking his waters and being refreshed by his teaching.” ²

Such sentiments appeared elsewhere, as well.

Finkelstein was particularly apprehensive about Kaplan’s influence here, as he was throughout his career. In the weeks before the speech, Finkelstein wrote a letter to his closest confidant at the time, Louis Ginzberg, asking how he should respond. ³ Using similar rhetoric as he did in the 1910s and 1920s about maintaining a cloistered Seminary, Ginzberg responded that he did not think that Finkelstein should be involved in the affairs of the Rabbinical Assembly at all:

“For a number of years, Doctor Kaplan has published books and articles containing views with which the members of the faculty, or to say the least, the majority thereof, do not agree. Why then, should the faculty now change its policy in this respect. It occurs to me that by doing so, we may be the cause of the Rabbinical Assembly attempting to interfere with the faculty.” ⁴

This greater mentality of seclusion clearly did not win out at the Seminary, in fact quite the opposite. But for Ginzberg, the “non-academic” Rabbinical Assembly represented a threat to his way of thinking. Reconciling with a figure such as Kaplan was impossible, and therefore Ginzberg preferred for the Seminary not to engage in the discussion from the outset.

As Kaplan expressed through his visions of cultural pluralism that in many ways steered the movement as a whole, in this speech in 1949, he established that it was imperative for the Jewish people to find common ground among the defined denominations in America, which he determined to be Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Secular. ⁵ Kaplan noted that despite the distinctive ideologies within Judaism, Conservative Judaism still had the opportunity to be a “constructive force in Jewish life.” ⁶

Of all times in Judaism, Kaplan stressed, it was essential during this era to mount a unified front, for the sake of the new Jewish state. However, due to Jews’ inability to communicate, they had been rendered “virtually incapacitated” to mount an effective “response to the second challenge, that of the establishment of the State of Israel.” ⁷

Kaplan was quite vocal about his labor Zionist leanings, conceptions that logically fit within his ideas of the Jewish civilization, synthesizing his own blend of the Zionisms of Ahad Haam, A.D. Gordon and Martin Buber. Kaplan resolved that only a Jewish national home could foster a spirit to “achieve those environmental conditions which are essential to its becoming a modern, creative and spiritual civilization.” ⁸ Of all times in Jewish history, Kaplan voiced that the Jewish people had a central cause for which to advocate — Israel was the ultimate turning point which required a unity of both philosophical and practical proportions.

Kaplan understood Judaism to represent universal religious and spiritual values, but in the system of congregational Judaism, people were unable to experience a “consensus…as to what [was] to unite them, or what their status [was] as a society in relation to each other.” ⁹ Ira Eisenstein expressed similar sentiments in 1945:

“In meeting as rabbis, we have a tendency to forget what all of us knew before we got here, that Jewish life consists of a whole complexity of activities and institutions and movements, of which our synagogues are only a part. It may hurt some of us very deeply to be only a part and not the whole, but I think we must recognize the reality of the situation. Our community history has oscillated in the last hundred years between community and congregation. Now it is going back to community.” ¹⁰

Having the Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel be the sole voice for Jews was not an option for Kaplan, and therefore it was absolutely essential for Jews to embrace commonalities, as he expressed in the conclusion to the introduction: “Our most urgent task, therefore, is to find what status shall unite Jews in Israel with those outside Israel, as well as all affirmative Jews, to whichever of the four previously described sections they belong. No section of Jewry is exempt from that task.” ¹¹

One week after marching with 2,000 people and rallying against the Haredification of Jerusalem, epitomized by Nofrat Frankel being arrested at the Kotel (Western Wall) for wearing a talit (prayer shawl) and gangs of ultra-orthodox men protesting the Intel workers in Kiryat Yovel for working on Shabbat, Kaplan’s words ring true ever more.

As can be seen in his principles below, Kaplan would also agonize about the linguistic and sociological formulation of Israel society bifurcating between “hiloni” and “dati,” the split between religious and secular populations in Israel. Nowhere else in the world are Jews “secular” than Israel — an irony of epic proportions. Yet the sociological realities of a significant, perhaps even a majority, of society not wanting to be defined by others’ definitions of religion creates for a vacuum of religious expression for many. Perhaps this is an overstatement — there are options for the religious center. And they are growing. But the very fact that the Hebrew language presents Jews as “secular” is highly problematic for me, and I think it would be for Kaplan, too.

Kaplan emphatically voiced that it was more important for the Conservative movement first to concentrate on the global Jewish community and only after that could it concentrate internally; the Conservative movement on its own merits could not directly attack right wing ideologies, but by rallying the vital center, the ideologies of both the “particular” and “universal” won.

As Kaplan stated, “What is of concern to Jewry as a whole should always take precedence over what can be of concern only to a fraction of Jewry." ¹² This did not preclude helping the movement itself, and Kaplan gave specific suggestions for Conservative Judaism, but he certainly gave a set of priorities first to help the world Jewish population and then the movement, which Finkelstein had already illustrated as his policy.

Kaplan outlined four distinct groups among the Jewish people in 1949, which he notably does not define as “movements” — while he introduces these four groups on the first page of the speech, he does not outline them as Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and Secularist until his conclusion. ¹³ His primary goal was no less than to ensure Jewish continuity into the next generation — “there is nothing so urgent nowadays as for all Jews throughout the world to present a common spiritual front against the menace of Jewish self-liquidation.”

Such was the general trend of the Conservative movement, and in no small part why the movement thrived as it did in the 1950s — it indeed both sought and captured the big tent of American Judaism, a vision for the American religious center over a movement-wide vision. These notions were by no means mutually exclusive, nor are they now, but Kaplan emphasizes both his own priorities and indeed the priorities of the movement for the fifties.

In terms of Conservative particularism, here too he emphasizes the need to recognize disparate opinions and in turn to unite the movement in the same way that he voices this goal for Jewish “peoplehood.” Where in Judaism writ-large there were four groups, in Conservative Judaism, three.

Kaplan outlines some of the basic tensions in modern Jewish life, tensions which will be present for at least the rest of my lifetime. That is why I am continually drawn to this speech. Enjoy.

Below is a majority of the principles, in Kaplan’s own words, taken directly from the copy of the speech that he gave that Dec. 6, 1949 ¹⁴ :

1. The need for adopting the status of peoplehood:

The time has come for all affirmative Jews to recapture that long lost experience of oneness with the people of Israel past, present and future. That should be easy for those who subscribe to the historicity of the miracles recorded in the Pentateuch. It is also attainable, however, by those who regard those stories as legends. The miracle for the Jewish people itself, in its struggle not only to survive but to find meaning in its survival is enough to evoke the emotional response of ahavat Yisrael (love of Israel).”

2. The indispensability of the Jewish community in Israel as the hub of the Jewish people.

The truth is that, despite the religious uniformity that obtained among the Jewish communities in pre-modern times, they had little connection with one another. Each was an island unto itself. What the Jews lost through disparateness of communities they made up with their common devotion to the Torah and the Rabbinic interpretation of it. Now, however, the disparateness itself has to give way to unity. Never since Jews have been scattered, have Jewish communities been so drawn together on the one hand by the dire need for help, and on the other for the generous desire to be of help. Such investment should be treated as the modern form of the highly important mitzvah of yishuv Eretz Yisrael (commandment of settling the land of Israel).

3. The recognition of theological diversity as legitimate and normal

Even on the assumption that tradition was infallible, it never was possible to accept the requirement of uniformity of belief and practice as a prerequisite to Jewish unity. This assumption is today challenged as never before. With most Js in our day acquiring basic lit in non-Jewish schools, and absorbing there the general spirit of questioning and criticism, it is altogether improbable that we shall ever again develop a consensus on the infallibility of tradition. Freedom of thought and the right to be different are today no longer merely intellectual but moral issues. To deny freedom of thought in Jewish life and the same time that, as citizens of the democratic states where alone they are likely to enjoy human rights, Jews have to be among the foremost defenders of freedom of thought is to render them subject to destructive schizophrenia.

4. The broadening of the concept of a religion to enable the Jewish people to designate itself as a religiously community

Though Superficially resembles what Reform enunciated, it has a radically different denotation and connotation. It asks that we Jews who have contributed to the religious life of mankind continue to be creative in the sphere of religion … We Jews are impelled to foster that broader conception of religion, which permits theological differences, not only in order to reconstitute our unity, but also in order to make ourselves understood by our neighborhoods. To our neighbors, the only understandable reason for wishing to maintain our corporate unity and identity can be some particular version of religion.

…Moreover, we should at the same time be vindicated a far more intensive and dynamic unity among Jews themselves that could have been possible, with the conventional notion of religion current in the days of those founders.

5. In the United States and Canada, Jewish peoplehood should be mediated through local organic communities

Although all American Jews are, in a sense in the same boat, there is no such thing any longer as compelling everyone of them to pull his own weight at least. Most Jews prefer to rest on their oars.

The only way in which the peoplehood of the Jews can be made an object of flesh and blood experience is to create the human instrument, without which peoplehood would remain a mere potential energy without the dynamo to actualize it.

Since the will to live as a Jew depends so much upon personal preference, every Jew must be enrolled in the endeavor to make the need for belonging a motive for wanting to belong to the Jewish people as a whole and not merely to a clique, or club, or congregation, or even a fraternal order. Translated in to action, that means the formation of workable organic communities.

Organic communities would thus be the deliberate outcome of the attempt on the part of Jews to do what their neighbors had to do as Christians.

6. The need of coping with the problem of Jewish law.

Except for three responsa: kohanim in 1928, takkanah for agunot during the war and the rabbinical assembly prayer book, there has been nothing produced by us.

While the views on Jewish law among us are probably as numerous as our members themselves, we can generally be grouped under three headings. There are Rightists, for who m the present situation seems quite satisfactory. There are the Centrists, who regard the present situation as anomalous, but who believe that any advances in the field of Jewish law ought to be predicated on our ability to discover authority for it within the traditional literature. There are leftists — among whom, as everyone here and elsewhere knows, I count myself—have been hoping that the Law Committee would resort to traditional law for the rendering of decisions whenever the conditions under which the law arose where anywhere near like those which still obtain today.

The fact, however, is that the present Law Committee which consists of representatives of the three groups, Right, Center and Left, has managed to avoid getting itself into a state of deadlock, and has succeeded in achieving consensus on some very important questions… The very freedom and latitude which have made it possible for us to work together in spite of our differences are by no means the least valuable traits of our movement. To these traits our movement, no doubt, owes much in the way of Jewish creativity.

7. The need of rendering Jewish life abundant

Chief manifestation of the creative potential of the Conservative movement is the tendency of all who play a role in it to stress the need of rendering Jewish life as abundant and as full of soul-enriching content as the conditions under which we live permit. We are all agreed that we should, on principle, always aim at the maximum possible in every for of Jewish self-expression, whether it be education, prayer, the observance of the Sabbath and festivals. In that regard, we are no diff from the Orthodox. But we tend to go far beyond them, and it is that tendency which we should stress and deliberately cultivate.

The foregoing presentation is not intended to preclude an alternative formulations of what should be the position taken by our movement. However, even if the specific principles adduced be wide for the mark, I nevertheless believe with all my heart that he future of our movement depends upon the acceptance of the following principles:

1. That it is to the highest interest of the Conservative movement to formulate a plan that would offer a common meeting ground for all affirmative Jews whether Orthodox, Reform, Conservative or Secularist
2. That the Conservative movement should legitimize three groups in its own midst
3. That the problems of law and standards and of Jewish life abundant are the main areas in which the distinctive character of the Conservative movement should find expression.

--
1. Toward the Formulation of Guiding Principles for the Conservation Movement,” Conservative Judaism, Vol. VI, No. 4. (May, 1950), 3

2. Robert Gordis, “Authority in Jewish Law,” Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly, 1942, 64

3. Letter from Finkelstein to Ginzberg, November 7, 1949, Ratner Center Archives

4. Letter from Ginzberg to Finkelstein, November, 22 1949, Ratner Center Archives

5. Interestingly, Kaplan describes “four distinct groups, each with its own ideology” well before defining them. From the current perspective, it would seem he were speaking of Reconstructionist as the fourth group, but clearly Reconstructionism was far from being deemed a separate movement at this point in history.

6. Kaplan, “Toward the Formulation of Guiding Principles for the Conservative Movement,” Conservative Judaism, Vol. VI, No. 4. (May, 1950), 5

7. Ibid., 4

8. Mark Raider, The Emergence of American Zionism,(New York: New York University Press, 1998), 151. For more information on Kaplan’s Zionism, see Kaplan, A New Zionism, (New York: Herzl Press, 1959)

9. Kaplan, “Toward the Formulation of Guiding Principles for the Conservative Movement,” Conservative Judaism, 7

10. R.A., “Our Expansion Program – A Reevaluation,” Proceedings, 1945, 217

11. Kaplan, “Toward the Formulation of Guiding Principles for the Conservative Movement,” Conservative Judaism, 8

12. Ibid., 19

13. From the current perspective, it would seem he were speaking of Reconstructionist as the fourth group, but clearly Reconstructionism was far from being deemed a separate movement at this point in history. For a comprehensive look at the evolution of reconstructionism, from ideology to movement, see Deborah Ann Musher, “Reconstructionist Judaism in the Mind of Mordecai Kaplan: The Transformation from a Philosophy into a Religious Denomination,” American Jewish History, 86.4 (1998): 397-417

14. Kaplan, “Toward a formulation of Guiding Principles for the Conservative Movement,” Ratner Center Archives,” to be delivered December 6, 1949, labeled confidential

Mordecai Kaplan and Jacob's struggle with "the ish"

This week we read parashat VaYishlach, which features the famous passage of Jacob fighting with his adversary, perhaps an angel of God, perhaps Esau’s ministering angel, perhaps a “man” he encounters on the road. While described as an “ish,” a man, in Genesis 32:25, after the night-long encounter Jacob exclaims, “I have seen a divine being face to face yet my life has been preserved.” This “ish” similarly will not tell Jacob his name (32:30), perhaps a virtue of the fact that the name is too Holy for human ears, or at the least is not meant for Jacob. Whether this is a “man” or another figure, he most certainly is not a simple mortal.

The peshat, the plain meaning of the text, does not necessarily indicate that this mysterious “ish” is a negative character in relation to Jacob. Perhaps it is a test for Jacob, and by virtue of the fact that he emerges triumphant at the end of the night, he receives the name Yisrael, indeed a prophetic name in reference to the future of the Jewish people.

The derash, the interpretative method of the Rabbis, meanwhile almost exclusively reads this “ish” as a negative adversary, out to destroy Jacob. For example, Shir HaShirim Rabbah (Parasha 3, Siman 3) posits a parable of a chief bandit fighting with the son of the king. The bandit raised his eyes and saw the king looking at the two of them and the bandit in turn weakened himself. So, too, the midrash posits, did the angel shrink from attacking Jacob because it saw God looking at the two fighting.

In many ways this midrash reminds me of the Lion King. Think Mufasa, Simba and Scar.

This is one example of such — this was not a wrestling match, but an attempt to destroy Jacob, and in turn, his lineage.

As we studied these passages today in class, I remembered that Agudat HaRabbanim’s official excommunication against Mordecai Kaplan uses this very formulation to castigate the reconstructionist leader.

In the document “Nosah Hahlatat HaHerem,” page 3, the paragraph reads in full (my translation):

Those who ask why Agudat HaRabbanim did enact a herem against the Reformers, who also printed a prayer book, and added and removed from the liturgy whatever to their hearts’ content, and also are inciters and instigators, the answer: These same Reformers have already separated from the community of Israel, for every man of Israel knows that he does not have any connection with them (the Reformers). And the geonim of Israel already declared in their time, such as the Gaon Rabbi Akiva Igger, the Gaon Rabbi Moshe Sofer, and the Gaon Rabbi Yehudah Melisah, and the Gaon Rabbi Hermann Baneth, who were alive during that same era, the begins of the creation of Reform Temples, and there they fought with them with all of their might and strength. For there were greats of Israel in that day who said, “It is more comfortable for a Jew to enter a Church and not to enter a Reform Temple”… But this same man, Dr. Kaplan, he is within (emphasis mine) the children of Israel, speaking and behaving as a Jew, and he has a synagogue where Jews make mistakes by following him and come there to pray. And he serves as an educator of the children Israel, and it is said about him “vayaavek ish imo” (Genesis 32:25). And as it our sages said (Babylonian Talmud Hullin 91), “Like a sage he appeared, and took honor from Jacob;” see the interpretation of Rashi on this passage. So too is the man Dr. Kaplan dressing himself as a sage (Talmid Haham), bringing Jews to follow after him, and he is leading them astray from belief in God and His Torah, which is far worse than the Reformers. And therefore they did as they did, according to the law of the Torah, lawfully and justly.

The text asserts that the Reformers already separated themselves so much from traditional doctrine that they were no longer a threat to the core, which was not the case with Kaplan, who “clothed himself” as a traditional Jew and sage. Additionally, the great sages of the nineteenth century had already fought the battles that needed to be fought with the Reform movement, and thus Agudat HaRabbanim, which formed in 1901, did not feel the need to continue this battle. The Biblical quote in the passage comes from the narrative of Jacob wrestling with the “Angel,” suggesting that Kaplan will both physically and spiritually injure the Jewish people, Israel.

The Talmudic citation from Hullin, as interpreted by Rashi, comes as part of a discussion of how the Angel appeared to Jacob in Genesis. Rav Acha states that the angel appeared to Jacob “clothed” as a Torah scholar, and therefore Jacob positioned himself on the left side of the angel, as Mar said, “One who walks to the right of his teacher does not possess proper manners.” For that reason, the Angel was able to attack Jacob’s right side. In the same way, this text suggests that Kaplan appears to Israel as a talmid hacham but really is an angel out to fool and injure the Jewish people, even destroy it outright if he were able to accomplish the task.

The analogy by definition is subjective. All are, I suppose.

Indeed the document explains why Agudat HaRabbanim deemed Kaplan to be so threatening, as opposed to other “heretics” who had so clearly separated themselves from the norms of Jewish religious practice that traditionalists would not go near them in the first place.

While I believe that the excommunication decree was both xenophobic and inherently counterproductive in 1945, the organization uses the sources quite well. Agudat HaRabbanim believed that Kaplan was out to destroy the Jewish people, and citing this midrash, in turn, is thus quite apt. To Agudat HaRabbanim, Kaplan was PRECISELY this arch-angel.

The Yahrtzeit of the greats of the Conservative Movement; today: R. Mordecai Menahem Kaplan, 2 Kislev

Often we speak of our lives in terms of “aha” moments. In turning points.

It never is so simple. Lives don’t exist in vacuums as such.

Yet our lives still can be defined by specific moments which manifest these larger trends.

Educationally, an internship at the National Museum of American Jewish History served as a springboard to much of my current interest in modern Jewish history and overall exploring Jewish identity in the modern world. There I began work on a paper about the excommunication of Mordecai Kaplan. In the coming year, a version of it will be published in the American Jewish Archives Journal. Keep your eyes peeled.

The assignment was to originally write a 20-page paper on anything I wanted. That semester it ended up being 60.

The following semester, I decided to turn it into a formal thesis. The topic consumed me. And it really has only blossomed from there.

In the process of writing the thesis, I studied the history of the Conservative Movement, with particular attention paid to the Schechter and Finkelstein years (heads of the Jewish Theological Seminary between 1902-15 and 1940-72, respectfully) .

For a whole host of reasons, the history of JTS and the Conservative Movement as a whole is my favorite academic subject. I read this stuff for fun. Both for the fun facts — and the macro ideologies. (I am pained when apartments such as those on the fifth floor of 515 W. 122nd St. use Tradition Renewed as a TV stand — I'm talking to you Loosh).

With this said, I’ll be sharing a series of posts commemorating some of the giants of the Conservative Movement on each respective yahrtzeit (anniversary of the day that an individual died, literally, a year of time in Yiddish).

They have a special spot on the Bustenai Google Calendar (that's right. If you are visiting, you'll be featured prominantly) and will on this blog, too.

This is not meant to “Lionize” the individuals. Though it might do so in the process.

Mostly, it’s a chance to give credit where it’s due.

Today, the second of Kislev is the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Mordecai Menahem Kaplan, הרב מרדכי מנחם בן הרב ישראל. He lived for 102 years, between 1881 and 1983.

For an incredible set of interviews that Professor Mel Scult conducted with Kaplan, see this .



I presented the following text four years ago to the Conservative Yeshiva, with some modifications I have made since then. Below that are some additional sources to consider:



Here’s as quick a resume rundown I can do for a man that lived 102 years and was one of the most influential Jewish leaders in America for almost that entire time. Kaplan graduated in 1902 from the Jewish Theological Seminary and during the next twenty years alone he did the following: was the rabbi at Kehillat Jeshurun in New York, where he was the first to institute English sermons in an Orthodox synagogue, professor at the Seminary beginning in 1909 until 1963, founder of Young Israel, founder of the Teacher’s Institute at the Seminary (now List College), rabbi of the New York Jewish Center – he was also one of the chief candidates to be the chief rabbi of Great Britain, though he turned down the offer (that’s a little known fact, courtesy of this interview. Impress your friends).

Fast forward a bit and he founded and was rabbi of the Society for Advancement of Judaism synagogue, officiated at the first Bat Mitzvah in America (his daughter), founded an ideology that would lead to its own movement, founded another synagogue in Israel and greatly shaped the consciousness of being a religious Jew in America. That was the recap.

Yet through all of this, he remarked in his journal during the mid-twenties about how he was deeply disappointed in about how he had not published. Let's just say he caught up.

To my mind, the most remarkable part about Mordecai Kaplan rested in how he evolved and enunciated a philosophy and then found a way to activate it in modern American life. He literally translated ideology into action. Of course, to his mind, there really was no choice but to do this – if he didn’t American Judaism was bound to die. As he wrote in, Judaism as a Civilization: “The truth of the matter is that what is at stake is the very maintenance of Jewish life as a distinct societal entity. Its very otherness is in jeopardy.”

But in many ways, the fifties in American Judaism epitomized his vision 20 years prior – the Finkelstein era of the Seminary had the base-ideology of Kaplan, though Finkelstein would never say this aloud. His very ideology sparked the action of an engaging pluralism in American Judaism.

During a talk at Brandeis Hillel, when he was well into his nineties he remarked a statement that continues to resonate with me: “those who did not agree with his viewpoint on Judaism had a right to be wrong — but in his estimation they were still wrong.” This view is common in modern discourse, but in the seventies was well ahead of its time.

His main philosophical thesis is now common in academic circles – that each era of Jews have evolved over the course of time, that each “civilization” represented different cultural significance and therefore had to be judged on its own merit, particularly when discussing halakhic norms. Ironically oft-quoted by the Reform movement now, ironic because he polemicized against Reform throughout his career, Kaplan thus stated that “halakha has a vote but not a veto.”

Meanwhile, his theological naturalism served as the backbone to associate with a modern manifestation of God, what Kaplan referred to as “the Power that makes for salvation.” For Kaplan it was not a matter of what God “is” but how God interacted with the world.
Ira Eisenstein, Kaplan’s chief disciple and son-in-law, once found him “davening from Dewey” – one of Kaplan’s “rebbes” of naturalism.

The fact that Kaplan created tangible ways for people to interact with his vision of Judaism made the religion a communal venture, which was ultimately his goal in the first place. And that was what people most feared.

It is why the ENTIRE faculty of JTS issued a unanimous letter to Kaplan berating him for the changes he made in his New Haggadah of 1941. It’s why Agudat HaRabbanim excommunicated him in 1945 and subsequently burned a copy of his prayer book as part of the formal ceremony.

As the formal text reads of the excommunication (herem) reads:

“Dr. Kaplan has published a new monster that was prepared in the name of a prayer book [their emphasis]; its contents were shown to the eye of every heretic and heresy before the God of Israel and the fields of the faith of Israel’s Torah… Because every Jewish Haredi knows from a Reformer, that he needs to stray from them, but the Conservative clothe themselves in a new Judaism after them stream Haredi Jews, because they think that it is the same as ours.”

A book that could simultaneously lead haredim to think that it was a traditional siddur and lead them to complete heresy? That’s something.

The only people that get excommunicated are those that have serious influence. You have to have some serious tochen (substance). Traditionalists feared Kaplan because he had power in the community, and used it to lead people toward his conception of relating to Jewish Civilization in the modern era. Say what you want about his theology, his manipulation of the liturgy — his impact on building communities is admirable.

In the past decade, people would call him a community organizer. But his efforts went way beyond that.

People often assign the term “modern prophet” to certain monumental icons of the modern era. They give the term to giants such as Lincoln and King. But what exactly does the term mean? For me, a modern prophet is one who assigned his entire existence to end the iniquity of a particular status quo. Kaplan certainly would apply here.

On Kaplan’s 90th birthday, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, said of his fellow modern prophet: “I have a suspicion that just as the mystics of old used to stay up at midnight worrying about the Shekhina, he stays up at night doing Tikkun Hatzos (midnight prayers of repairing cosmic damage) and worrying about the Jewish people.”¹

Sitting now in the Israeli state with such disparate communities, Kaplan’s vision for community building, for organizing, would have particular merit for 2009. His words still ring true 75 years after the publication of his manifesto, Judaism as a Civilization.



Some food for thought, selected paragraphs written by Kaplan:

On Jewish prayer:

“Unfortunately, we Jews have limited prayer to the deadening routine of reciting the few meager passages which make up our official prayer book. If I [had] anything to do with prescribing the rules of prayer… I would have insisted that the vast storehouse of religious poetry be drawn upon continually.”

“A liturgy, like every vital living organism, should be a growth and not a manufactured article like a piece of haberdashery, or a sort of charade. It should be the incarnation of the Godly life of a people’s soul…."²

Recognition of Benedict Spinoza's precedent in modern Jewish thought:

“What Spinoza really did was to shatter once and for all the pretentious claims of the philosophers of the traditional religions that they were able to harmonize the theurgic conception of God with the philosophic conception. And his second achievement is in demonstrating that the philosophic conception of God can serve as the basis of an ethical program. To be sure even in this respect he was anticipated by the Stoics. But there is a difference between saying a thing for the first time, and reaffirming it in the face of universal denial and opposition.”³

Commentary on Halacha, using the example of a Herem (excommunication decree) as a particular precedent for the human politicization of God’s law (3 years prior to his own excommunication):

“What was intended to be only divine law was translated into human sovereignty. The abolition of the Herem has brought about the need for rethinking our position from that moment on. Jewish law is based on voluntarism. There cannot be any more the sanctions which make law, if you are going to use the term law in a pulpit sense.”⁴


Kaplan, after the excommunication:

“Here is where the nazi [sic] pattern of struggle for power beings to emerge,” explained Kaplan in his journal. “The Nazis – the spokesmen of a people trying to overcome its sense of insecurity by a violent struggle for power – singled out the democracies as the object of attack. In order to bring about inner division among these democracies the nazis [blamed] the Jews, who were the most conspicuous beneficiaries of democracy …. In like manner the most conspicuous beneficiaries of the liberal policy of the Conservative movement is Kaplan whose atheistic philosophy is the dominant philosophy of the movement. It is therefore urgent that we must stop him. Now that he has come out with a prayer book in which he openly aims his heresies is the most opportune time to launch an attack against the entire Conservative movement.”⁵

and

"I have always had nothing but profound contempt for the rabbis associated with the 'Union + C.' I had enough of a close-up view of them to know their unusual dealings... This bastardly action of theirs at the present time when even the greatest reactionaries are still lying low and dare not violate publicly the four freedoms for which the war against Germany was suffered and won is liable to render us Jews odious even to the more liberal elements of the general community. What a shattering effect this exhibition of moral [degeneracy] on the part of men who call themselves rabbis has upon me I can hardly express. All my efforts depend upon faith in the Jewish people. With so much corruption wherever I turn, I find it exceedingly hard to carry on the struggle for Jewish survival. Truth to tell I experience neither the sufferings nor the consolation of a martyr.

If I were asked what I regard as the most disheartening aspect in Jewish life as reflected in the tragi-comedy of the herem, I would say that… we have rabbinical gangsters who resort to nazi methods in order to regain their authority and on the other hand our Jewish journalists are cynical about the whole business and treat the very attempt to articulate religious values in terms of a modern outlook in life as silly and superfluous."⁶

Commonality/”Pluralism” among the Jewish people

“Driven underground, our differences will only cancel out one another, leaving us completely neutralized. Brought to the surface and granted the normal interchange in the free market of ideas and ideals, our differences will enable each group among us to further in its own way what we all agree on as essential to the future of Judaism. We shall thus all be partners in the great adventure which all of us who have anything to contribute to the revitalization of Jewish life should be permitted to share.”⁷


On the mission of the Seminary

“It is that policy which Dr. Finkelstein has had the occasion to translate into deeds in a more strenuous time and under more difficult conditions those with which Dr. Schechter had to cope…The great function of reconciling all parties and appealing to all sects of the community, Dr. Finkelstein has shown himself as capable of carrying out in a manner so masterly, so skillful that we ought to be thankful to God that at this time when there is so much danger from divisiveness in the life of the Jewish people, that a leader has been given [to] us who is making of this institution a power for Jewish unity by none on the American scene.”⁸

and

“The precedent of having undergone metamorphoses twice before in the course of its career, as well as the inner restiveness both on its career, as well as the part of its graduates and lay adherents, should impel the Seminary to measure up to the need and opposition of these new times, and become the kind of institution that would resurrect the Jew’s faith in his people and its religion. In order to achieve this, the Seminary must avoid the pitfall of denominationalism.”⁹


Reflections on chaos breaking out in his classroom, an anomaly for the gifted teacher, but manifest of him never feeling at home in the Seminary.

“Before I knew it I realized that I had started a hornet’s nest. I was stung more than once by some of the remarks of the students. A battle royal broke out between the rightists and the leftists and between all of them and the Seminary as a while as represent at the moment by myself…[The rightists] referred particularly to my course. That hurt me keenly because I know that their attitude is entirely the result of the efforts of men like [Simon] Greenberg, [Moshe] Davis & [Bernard] Mandelbaum to foster a yarmulke and minyan kind of piety in the institution and of Prof. Abraham Heschel to counteract my influence by making my position out to be merely that of sociology and psychology without any understanding of the meanings of religion.” ¹⁰

On the founding of the University of Judaism:

“The decision of the Seminary authorities to develop their institution in to a university of Judaism is not prompted by love of bigness. They are impelled to take that step by the exigencies of American Jewish life. They realize that, if our children are to accept themselves as Jews, they must be provided with trained leadership not merely for their religious interests, but for all their Jewish interest, including the secular [emphasis his]. The problem of how to get our children to accept themselves as Jews is a very different one nowadays. We have to think and act anew.”¹¹

--
1. S. Daniel Breslauer, Mordecai Kaplan’s Thought in a Postmodern Age, (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1994), 283

2. Kaplan Journal, May 21, 1933 in Jack Cohen, Major Philosophers of Jewish Prayer in the Twentieth Century (New York : Fordham University Press, 2000), 64

3. Kaplan Journals, Sept. 10, 1928, published in Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai Kaplan, ed. Mel Scult, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press and The Reconstructionist Press, 2001), 265

4. Kaplan, “Comments on Dr. Gordis’ Paper,” Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly, 1942, 97

5. Kaplan Journals, June 23, 1945

6. Kaplan Journals, June 16, 1945

7. Kaplan, R.A. Proceedings, 1945, 202 in Greenbaum, Louis Finkelstein and the Conservative Movement, 253

8. R.A., Proceedings, “Testimonial to Rabbi Louis Finkelstein,” 1945, 201

9. Kaplan, “From Strength to Strength: A Proposal for a University of Judaism,” delivered February 4, 1945, 17, Ratner Center, 13

10.Kaplan Journal, 25 January 1950, in Scult, “Kaplan’s Heschel: A View from the Diary,” Conservative Judaism, Summer 2002

11. Kaplan, “A University of Judaism,” Conference on a University of Judaism, November 1946, 4, Ratner Center