Martin Luther King, Jr.

A new street in Jerusalem, perpendicular to Emek Refaim.

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day in America, a day to honor a modern prophet, a hero in American history and in the history of Civil Rights, writ large.

Below are comments by two professors at JTS, upon hearing of Dr. King's assassination. Eulogies only tell part of the story of a person's life. These are no exception.

Take a few minutes to read the words about King of these two scholars and leaders of American Jewry, the effect he had on all Americans.

Full text of Seymour Siegel's comments here, the full text from Louis Finkelstein here.

Seriously, click on them. They are the original documents from which the scholars read.



Below are some excerpts from the texts:

It is the loss of this hope which has brought dismay to so many in other lands, as they look over our country today, regarding its spiritual prospects as bleak. America has amassed great power — greater than any State in history. But in the process it has lost the spiritual vigor and leadership which it possessed in the days of its founding fathers. Dr. Martin Luther King was its opportunity to regain this leadership, as the moral guide to the World; precisely the same opportunity which Abraham Lincoln offered in his day.

Is it not strange that both of these spiritual heroes of America, whose moral greatness transcended all differences of color, ethnic background, creed and nationality should have been cut down before their time, through an assassin’s bullet.

“When a Sage is lost,” asks the Talmud, “where can we find his replacement?” Each of the many tasks of Martin Luther King, Jr., will be assumed by others. But who can combine in himself all the moral authority, all the spiritual promise, all the wisdom, all the greatness, who had become concentrated in him, even before he had reached his fortieth year. America does well to mourn its great loss; the world joins it in this sense of bereavement.

- R. Louis Finkelstein


Anyone’s death is a tragedy. The death of a man like Doctor Martin Luther King is a catastrophe. He has gone up to heaven in a chariot of fire in the midst of a storm. We can best honor him by converting the storm into a cleansing rain which brings new life and reconciliation. There should now roll across this land an irresistible wave of readiness and determination to men the wrongs we have done, a dedication to justice, generosity and boldness of spirit. Doctor King dared to dream the dream that this might take place. But, as he so prophetically said just a few days ago. He had only seen the promised land from afar from the top of the mountain. Perhaps with God’s help, his sacrifice will break the hardness of heart with which we are afflicted so that his people will finally inherit the land of promise. Is there any greater tribute, is there any greater meaning than that his death should bring us all closer to life. The light has been extinguished, the voice has been stilled, but the memory is here among us. When — because of it — we draw the strength and gain the wisdom to do what is right then indeed — as the Bible assures us — the memory of the righteous will be for a blessing.

-R. Seymour Siegel

Yahrzeit of R. Abraham Joshua Heschel

I did not get the chance to comment on 18 Tevet (last week), the yahrzeit of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. I will do a fuller post of words at a later time. For now, hear him in his own voice, in the 1972 Eternal Light interview with Carl Stern.



The full show can be found on You Tube. For the transcript, see here in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity.

I would also like to note that the internet has absolutely everything. It's really something.

Yahrtzeits of Conservative Movement gedolim: Sunday, 12 Kislev; The man who was named after a day school

I present this two days early. But I understand that there are some (ok, one) who print out my blogs and bring them to Shul on Shabbat.

This post is long. But Solomon Schechter (1847-1915, הרב שניור זלמן בן יצחק הכהן) is a man whose ideologies are the foundation of my worldview. So read to the end. See who this man is:



There are portraits throughout JTS of great minds of the past.

There’s a cluster right next to Alperin Lobby.

Cyrus Adler guards the bathrooms on the first floor.

Abraham Joshua Heschel gets his spot in the library.

But Solomon Schechter’s portrait gets its own location. His piercing eyes stare out of a face with a disheveled beard, his body draped in an enveloping red cloak. In some ways it’s a little like Hogwarts, Schechter’s eyes following you each time you head to the cafeteria line.

Mel Scult’s article on Schechter in Tradition Renewed dubs JTS “Schechter’s Seminary,” a feature of the influence he had when he led the institution, and the vision he had into the future, as well.

To say that JTS is still “Schechter’s Seminary” is hyperbolic. Yet that Chancellor Arnold Eisen’s 2007 inaugural address featured the living ideologies of Schechter’s 1902 inaugural speaks volumes of Schechter’s transcendent message. As Eisen stated two years ago, after African drums ushered him in:

“Let me remind you, as I did at the opening assembly last year, of Solomon Schechter’s emphasis on diversity in his inaugural address of 1902, and particularly of his horror at the thought of a faculty and student body who always agreed with him. We are not here to nod pleasantly at one another. For we have important work to do. If the year ahead passes without the unsettling of some settled convictions and the questioning of at least a few truths until now deemed self-evident, we all will have failed to meet one fundamental purpose of our teaching and learning together…

At JTS we have always known that honest difference for the sake of heaven makes us stronger—just as in-depth knowledge and thoughtful criticism of our tradition make Torah stronger. As Schechter put it in his inaugural lecture, “Faith and scholarship are not irreconcilable…

He meant that as an understatement. So do I. Shamor and zachor must be part of every dibbur we utter at JTS. Nuanced remembrance is key to all that we observe and preserve, including most especially what we preserve by changing it. This is never simple, of course, and there are many who would see the fidelity to both scholarship and Torah as an oxymoron.”

Schechter lays out the Seminary mission quite explicitly: a no-apologies engagement of Jewish tradition in the modern world. It is no surprise that the mission is so applicable to Jewish life a century after his first Seminary address.

A glance at Schechter’s eulogies gives perspective to the scope of his influence during his life (click for the NYT editorial):

“Not only American Jewry, but the Jewry of the world, may well exclaim in the words of old, talmid hacham shemet mi mevi lanu halifto “A great scholar died; who shall bring unto us a substitute for him?” stated Reform Rabbi Samuel Schulman. “As the distinguished and revered president of the Hebrew Union College (Kauffman Kohler) and co-worker in a great enterprise with Solomon Schechter already said, ‘There is no substitute for Solomon Schechter.' And truly it can be asserted that no one can take his place. There was a romance in the life of Solomon Schechter. And this romance reflects the romance in the life of the modern Jew. Many a Jew in this last one hundred years began his career in an humble town within the ghetto walls and, under God’s blessing, unfolded his powers, assimilating all that the modern spirit had to offer and becoming an influence of international scope.’” ¹

As Mordecai Kaplan described in his journal: "The crowd of people that had gathered though large (about 1,500-2,000) was by no means commensurate with the significance of Dr. Schechter to Judaism. We may now be prepared for changes of an eventful character.^{" 2}

Schechter lived the final thirteen years of his life in America. Yet he pioneered unique and fitting visions for the American Jewish scene with the eyes of an outsider. Small examples include that he claimed that every rabbi should know how to play baseball — there was no way to bring Judaism to American society without it. His collection of essays, Seminary Addresses and Other Papers features an essay on Abraham Lincoln, on his 100th anniversary, a beautiful ode to the American bridge-builder (I shall editorialize here that Googlebooks rocks).

Brought from Cambridge University specifically to lead the newly reestablished Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Schechter’s scholarship of the Cairo Genizah, secular education and scientific approach to Judaism preceded his arrival to America.

Even before activating change at the helm of the Seminary, the American Jewish Yearbook gave him a prophetic billing: “In the near future, [America will become] the centre and focus of Jewish religious activity and the chosen home of Jewish learning.” ³

Schechter’s death marked much more than the death of just a man; people despaired that no individual could possibly replace him on the American Jewish scene, and thus the religion as a whole would suffer drastically.

Along with a certain mystique in the walls of the Seminary, his philosophy of Jewish life would reappear throughout Kaplan’s conceptions of Jewish peoplehood and community, and in Finkelstein’s attempts to secure the Seminary as the centerpiece of religious life in America, even the world, during his tenure.

While Schechter did not dub Judaism a “civilization,” his vision of Judaism as an all-encompassing entity, defined in both universal and national terms rings with Kaplan’s conceptions of viewing Judaism as an evolving civilization. Though Schechter would not go near to allowing his greater theology to change the nature of halakha, perhaps the reason why Kaplan was most thoroughly castigated, Schechter viewed Judaism as an evolving religion:

“Judaism was an organism with a natural growth, rooted in the Torah… That certain foreign beliefs and foreign usages should creep in was unavoidable, as Israel neither could nor would shut itself from the influences of the outside world.” ⁴

Schechter is widely known for his conceptions of the Jewish people being a nation of “Catholic Israel,” an ideal which manifested the unity of the Jewish people throughout the course of Jewish history. Kaplan, in fact, used Schechter’s rhetoric to describe the nature of the Jewish people being an organic community:

“Since the interpretation of Scripture or the Secondary Meaning is mainly a product of changing historical influence, it follows that the center of authority is actually removed from the Bible and placed in some living body, which by reason of its being in touch with the ideal aspiration and religions needs of the age, is best able to determine the nature of the Secondary Meaning.” ⁵

With the belief in the authority of community, Schechter thus philosophically felt that a unified body, not a denomination would shape the modern American experience; specifically for Schechter, the Seminary would seek to be the embodiment of Catholic Israel, thereby giving the institution the ability, even the mandate, to integrate modern sensibilities with Judaism. ⁶

Of course, this assumes that there is an entity that could possibly represent the views of the entirety of the Jewish people.

Granted, the Seminary could not truly be the centerpiece of world Jewry, as modernity allowed and mandated for personal autonomy and freedom of thought. However, Finkelstein’s efforts to position the Seminary as the beacon of Judaism gave it a particular influence whose base was set with Schechter.

In his inaugural speech, Schechter articulated the notion of the Seminary being a location for all Jews to study – this would not be the headquarters of Conservative Judaism, rather the epicenter of Judaism at large:

“Such a community is indeed a mystery. And this has become perplexing; for it is amidst all these Judaisms and non-Judaisms that my colleagues and myself are called upon to create a theological centre [sic.] which should be all things to all men, reconciling all parts and appealing to all sections of the community. If I understand correctly the intention of those who honored me with their call, and if I interpret my own feelings aright, this school should never become partisan ground or a hotbed of polemics, making ‘confusion worse confounded.’” ⁷

Defining the Seminary in the broadest possible terms, particularly at its inception, should not be surprising. As with a presidential inauguration, Schechter sought to give a vision for his entire career at the helm of what he hoped to be the bastion of Jewish learning in America. But the speech particularly resonates with Schechter’s ideological conceptions of “Catholic Israel,” which could have functioned independently from his helm at the Seminary. As Mel Scult explains, at least from the outset of his tenure as head of the Seminary, Schechter sought for the Seminary to what Kaplan would later dub, “adjectiveless Judaism.” ⁸

Finkelstein would seize upon these founding principles as a particular justification why he reached outside of the Seminary during his term, stating in 1945:

“I do not think it is an accident that the Seminary should find itself pushed, as it were, out of the Jewish scene and on the world scene. It did not do it out of choice. It was not that all of a sudden we got a brainstorm and decided we must go had and try to help build peace in the world. It is because the institution itself was built on these very foundations of peace and understanding people who are different, encouraging differences and being grateful for differences.” ⁹ [emphasis mine]

Schechter’s influence in the Jewish community, as well as his personal qualities, were omnipresent at the Seminary under Finkelstein’s term, so much so that over forty years after he gave his inaugural speech, this precedent could be used as a particular strong reason for why Finkelstein would foster a particular spirit at the Seminary.

If Schechter viewed denominationalism at all during his term, it was between Reform and everybody else, and as Neil Gillman described, the Seminary represented, “everybody else.”

Yet Schechter worked toward including the Reform factions in the community of Catholic Israel despite the deep ideological divides, notably stating in a 1913 speech:

“Thank God, there are still a great many things and aims for which both parties can work in harmony and perfect peace, and unite us… There is also the great work which Judaism can do for humanity at large, in which both parties can combine... We have become so infatuated with the doctrine of the survival of the fittest that we have lost all sensibility to the great moral catastrophes which are passing before our eyes.” ¹⁰

During a time when Reform Judaism attracted the largest portion of American Jews, Schechter did not try to convert Reformers to his viewpoint, but rather viewed that notions of denominationalism were particularly dangerous to the fabric of Judaism as a whole. ¹¹


However, anyone else was welcome, anyone “who [had] not accepted the Union Prayer Book nor performed their religious devotion with uncovered heads.” ¹³ In his 1915 Seminary, Schechter again differentiated between “Reform and everybody else”:

“The greater part of a rather lengthy lecute is devoted to proving that not only was the application of scientific methods to Jewish studies not incompatible with the spirit of conservative ¹⁴ , but that it was largely conservative Jews, or at least, men indifferent to Reform tendencies, who availed themselves of the scientific method and became subsequently the most prominent representatives of the scientific movement….” ¹⁵


Notably, Rabbi Robert Gordis pointed to the qualification of the term Catholic Israel to illustrate that Kaplan could not be included in this community because of his abandonment of religious law as a binding factor in Jewish life. ¹⁶

With the justification of unifying Catholic Israel, Schechter established the United Synagogue of America, an organization that sought to unify the traditional forces in America, manifesting in its name its status as a non-denominational entity. ¹⁷ As Finkelstein would indicate in the forties, Schechter saw a unification of American Jewry as the only way to overcome what were inevitable struggles Judaism would have within the scope of modernity.

In his 1913 platform for the United Synagogue, Schechter explained that without a unified front against the inherent problems that would beset Judaism, the religion would dissolve:

“Yes, in view of the danger threatening the historic faith dear to Conservative and Orthodox alike, we regard is as a sacred duty that all forces unite, irrespective of the differences which otherwise divide them. Such cooperation should not be construed as the organization’s approval of all those innovations which some of its bodies have introduced….

Close observation for ten years and more has convinced me that unless we succeed in effecting an organization, which loyal to the Torah, to the teachings of the sages, to the traditions of the fathers, to the usages and customs of Israel, shall and the same time, introduce the English sermon and adopt scientific methods in our seminaries, in our training of Rabbis and schoolmasters for our synagogues and Talmud Torahs, and bring order and decorum in our synagogues, unless this is done, I declare unhesitatingly that Traditional Judaism will not survive another generation in this country.” ¹⁸

While “Conservative Judaism” may have been implanted on the movement from the outside, like with the name of the United Synagogue of America, Schechter noted that the name of the “Jewish Theological Seminary of America” was quite purposeful, chosen because it did not include references to a particular branch of Judaism; the directors of the institution had “distinctly shown their intention of avoiding sectarianism, for it is an especial American feature that no preference is given to any denomination or sect or theological richtung. All alike are welcome.” ¹⁹

Kaplan’s rhetoric more than forty years later in an address commemorating the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Seminary Teacher’s College resonated with Schechter’s inclusive ideology, seeking to create a Seminary that was true to the realities of its name:

“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.”²⁰

Schechter’s emphasis to unite all non-Reform forces in America seems to indicate that he sought particularly to enact his ideology of “Catholic Israel” at the Seminary; certainly, the lack of a strong statement such as Reform’s 1885 “Pittsburgh Platform” marked the Seminary as not following the only known precedent for creating a new movement in Judaism. Additionally the Wissenschaft scholarship of the Seminary differentiated the institution from those to the right of Schechter’s Seminary. However, this situated the Seminary as a special subset of traditional Judaism, not a new movement in toto.

From his opening address, Schechter emphasized the importance of studying the gamut of the history of the Jewish religion, where he specifically named the importance of the scientific study of approach to Judaism, not necessarily as the Truth, but as a viable approach in the history of the religion:

“We cannot, naturally, hope to carry the student through all these vast fields of learning at the cultivation of which humanity has now worked for nearly four thousand years. But this fact must not prevent us from making the attempt to bring the students on terms of acquaintance at least with all those manifestations of Jewish life and Jewish thought which may prove useful to them as future ministers, and suggestive and stimulating to them as prospective scholars….

[Founder of the Wissenschaft approach to Judaism, Leopold] Zunz’s motto was ‘Real knowledge creates action’ and the existence of such men as R. Saadya Gaon and R. Hai Gaon, Maimonides, and Nachmanides, R. Joseph Caro and R. Isaac Abrabanel, Samson Raphael Hirsch and Abraham Geiger, and an innumerable host of other spiritual kings in Israel, all ‘mighty in the battles of the Torah,’ and voluminous authors, and at the same time living among their people and for their people and influencing their contemporaries, and still at this very moment swaying the actions and opinions of men – all these bear ample testimony to the truth of Zunz’s maxim.”²¹

For Schechter, incorporating the entirety of the Jewish experience was the only educationally honest way to approach learning; ignoring Wissenschaft approaches because of the antagonistic argument that deconstructing religious texts with modern techniques was heretical, was an evasion of the issues. (It should be noted that Biblical criticism was not studied at the Seminary until well into Finkelstein’s term as the head of the institution. During the first several decades of the 20th century, Biblical criticism was wielded as an anti-Semitic axe).

Jews, he said, had an obligation to question, and an additional approach did not have to be threatening: “There is no cause to be afraid of much learning, or rather, of much teaching. The difficulty under which we labor is rather that there are subjects which cannot be taught, and yet do form an essential part of the equipment of a Jewish minister.” ²²

Schechter emphasized a complete involvement in Wissenschaft, to the exclusion of other aspects of a rabbinic life, even disliking the term “rabbi” itself.

Schechter sought to establish an institution that, above all, sponsored a feeling of intellectual freedom:

“The Torah gave spiritual accommodation for thousands of years to all sorts and conditions of men, sages, philosophers, scholars, mystics, casuists, school men and skeptics; and it should also prove broad enough to harbor the different minds of the present century…. The teaching in the Seminary will be in keeping with this spirit, and thus largely confined to the exposition and elucidation of historical Judaism in its various manifestations.” ²³

The portrait of Schechter hanging down the hallway from the library gives me goosebumps nearly every time I pass it. His visions for living an immersive Jewish and American life still resonate with me unlike many other thinkers in Jewish history. In addition to studying the gamut of Jewish studies, his vision for being a vivid and vital rabbi in America still pushes me as I continue in my rabbinic journey.


--

1. Rabbi Samuel Schulman, “Solomon Schechter,” Proceedings, Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1916

2. Kaplan journal, Nov. 20, 1915 in Communings of the Spirit, 98

3. Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 2004)188

4. Myer S. Kripke, “Solomon Schechter’s Philosophy of Judaism,” The Reconstructionist, 1937

5. Kaplan, “Toward the Formulation of Guiding Principles of the Conservation Movement,” to be delivered December 6, 1949, labeled confidential, Ratner Center; also published as a supplement to Conservative Judaism, Vol. VI, No. 4, May, 1950, 1-24

6. The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1904, s.v. “Judaism

7. Solomon Schechter, “Inaugural Address of Solomon Schechter as President of the Faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America,” New York, 1903, delivered Nov. 20, 1902, 7

8. Scult, “Schechter’s Seminary,” in Tradition Renewed, 59

9. R.A., Proceedings, 1945 in Greenbaum, Louis Finkelstein and the Conservative Movement, 235

10. Herbert Parzen, Architects of Conservative Judaism (New York: Jonathan David Publishers, 1964), 53

11. Ibid., 52

12. Ibid., 73

13. Ibid., 72

14. Schechter used the term “conservative” several times throughout his career as an adjective to describe the type of Judaism practiced at the Seminary. He never used Conservative with a capital “C” to describe the movement, however.

15. Schechter, “The Preface,” in Tradition and Change, 100

16. Gordis, “Authority in Jewish Law,” Proceedings, Rabbinical Assembly, 1942, 83

17. In 1991, the Union would change its name to the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, illustrating its commitment specifically to the Conservative movement.

18. Report United Synagogue of America, 1913, in Parzen, 68-69

19. Max Arzt, “Conservative Judaism as a Unify Force,” Conservative Judaism, Vol. V, No. 4, June 1949, 13

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

21. Solomon Schechter, “Inaugural Address,” 18-19

22. Ibid., 19

23. Ibid., 24-25

Yahrtzeits of Conservative Movement gedolim: Yom Louis

Today, 4 Kislev, marks the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Louis Finkelstein (1895-1991) and Rabbi Louis Ginzberg (1873-1953), two luminaries in twentieth century Jewish studies, and Finkelstein a figure who transformed the landscape of American Judaism during the mid-twentieth century — הרב לוי בן הרב יצחק והרב אליעזר בן הרב שמעון וחנה. (Click for NYT obituaries).

The first rabbi to be featured on Time magazine, the article describes Finkelstein as follows:

“There is no one spokesman for U.S. Judaism, no central authority, no High Priest. All good Jews, in varying degrees of literalness, believe in the Law, but U.S. Judaism is a spectrum shading off by minute gradations from ultra-orthodoxy to ultra-modernism. In this spectrum, Finkelstein, a traditionalist with one keen, dark eye on the future, stands at the center.”¹




The two renowned Louises were close both personally and academically, dating back to Finkelstein’s days as a rabbinical student at the Seminary. Finkelstein, who was a rising star in his days as a student, as well, was the first JTS student to receive the traditional rabbinic semikha (ordination) of Hatarat Horaah. Ginzberg examined Finkelstein for the exam.²

Ginzberg’s brilliance is the likes of few individuals of the past century. His masterpiece Legends of the Jews synchronizes all of Rabbinic midrash into a continuous narrative — and he did so before the computer was even conceived of. During a tour of the Penn library’s Jewish and Near Eastern Studies Room with my class on the Passover Haggadah (JANES is on the 4th floor in the back, if you’re curious), Professor David Stern pointed us to the six-volume set and declared that what took Ginzberg ten years to write would have taken any other person two lifetimes.



Ginzberg’s photographic memory and propensity for logic extended beyond the Jewish cannon. Following Albert Einstein’s arrival to the United States, Ginzberg engaged the physicist in both an academic and collegial relationship. Ginzberg’s ability to discuss math with Einstein was so great that it led him to think that he was the JTS professor of math!

“In all innocence, Einstein asked [Seminary chairman] Judge [Iriving] Lehman why the Seminary needed a department of mathematics,” Finkelstein recalled in a retrospective on Ginzberg’s life. “He got the impression from the conversation that Professor Ginzberg’s specialty was mathematics.”³

Among his many academic accomplishments, Ginzberg was the first Jew to receive an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, an honor he addressed as follows:

“I would have felt very sad if they would have ignored ‘Judaism’ or would have asked a so-called ‘representative’ Jew to represent Judaism. I am very happy that neither case happened; as far as I am concerned I am of course glad but not particularly so. I never craved for ‘fame’ which means a desire to be known by them who do not know you.”⁴


Throughout it all, Ginzberg was first and foremost a rabbi and religious Jew, seen in the title of his biography, Keeper of the Law. Rabbi David Golinkin's collection of his legal responsa illustrates the priority he put toward halakhic decision-making.

While Finkelstein’s influence stretched well beyond the walls of the academy, his intellectual acumen intimately affected both the scholar and the lay-person.

While in rabbinical school at JTS, Rabbi Alan Lucas did a favor for the Chancellor, and Finkelstein offered him a book a copy of The Jews as a thank-you. Rabbi Lucas responded that he already had a copy of The Jews, but would love a copy of the Sifrei (the Tannaitic midrash), if that would be okay. He then asked if Finkelstein would sign the copy.

“If you had asked for a copy of The Jews, I would have signed it for you,” he said. “But I didn’t write the Sifrei!”

And a sense of humor, to boot.

Even physically, he was a towering figure over American Judaism. An unofficial second-in-command at the Seminary during the thirties, he was the clear successor to Cyrus Adler, assuming the role of President of the Seminary in 1940 (the title chancellor would officially be given in 1949; he served as the leader of the institution until 1972).

A full biography of both Ginzberg and Finkelstein takes a book, and those books are well worth the read (Louis Ginzberg: Keeper of the Law and Louis Finkelstein and the Conservative Movement: Conflict and Growth). For now, some of my own reflections.

In 1950, Finkelstein dubbed the decade “more miraculous” even than the Exodus from Egypt, with “the manifestation of the Deity readily… discerned in almost any aspect of the downfall of Hitler.”⁴ So he placed religion in modern society — a dynamic engagement with the modern predicament.

Directly after one of the biggest public relations disasters in the history of the world, Finkelstein mandated a joining of disparate parties, particularly across religious spheres, to discuss and engage the problems of humanity.

“The waste of effort, the friction, and the controversies which this institutionalism involves are doubtless one of the most serious social problems of our age," he continued in the 1950 article, "and certainly is one of the most serious faced by the Jewish people.”⁵

Thus Finkelstein proposed a meeting of all groups in the community of Israel, because this moment in time particularly mandated it:

“I do know that if the participants are well chosen; and that if they are moved (as if properly chosen they inevitably would be) with the tragedy of all mankind, divided through barriers of misunderstanding, they will find a way to progress toward team-thinking; and with that toward appreciation of the real problem of our age – that of realizing the greatness of its potentialities, the miracles it has witnessed and the manifestation of God that has been granted it.”⁶

He manifested these goals nowhere more than in the symposia on Science, Philosophy and Religion. In the first ten years of the program, beginning in 1939, Finkelstein chaired conferences on the following subjects: Approaches to World Peace; Approaches to National Unity; Approaches to Group Understanding; Conflicts of Power in Modern culture; Learning and World Peace; Goals for American Education and Perspectives on a Troubled Decade.⁷ The names alone indicate how Finkelstein sought to bring together people from across faiths and backgrounds during a decade that he judged to be more tumultuous than any in the history of mankind.

In this vein, perhaps this quote manifests Finkelstein’s values more than any other:

“The era of isolationism is at an end, whether it applies to the isolation of nations, of peoples, or of cultural spheres…There can be no religious piety without social justice, no lasting economic prosperity without the sense for the spiritual, no political stability without compliance with moral principles. There is one God, one mankind, one law. The spirit of life is indivisible…

This reorientation is long overdue. The effort to effect it began with the birth of Judaism and it is of profound significance that the overwhelming insight into the need of such reorientation should come with a war which has brought the Jewish people unparalleled sorrow…

The problems of the ethical and social life transcend any group. Cooperation among scholars of all faiths concerning such problems is part of the Jewish tradition. We deem it appropriate to seek the clarification of the philosophical and moral problems in our time, insofar as they affect all men and require skills to be found in all groups, through cooperation across all differences and boundaries. We shall seek to further this cooperation because we believe that it can only lead to the deepening of our faith in Judaism, to the deepening of devotion to the true spirit of the Prophets among out neighbors.”⁸

Finkelstein was at the forefront of the underlying thesis which I have outlined elsewhere, that religion inherently was a moral force in the world, and that the manifestation of Nazism related the uniform failure of all religions to activate their moral norms. In plain terms, if religion had been doing its job, World War II would not have happened. Thus, as the leader of the Seminary, both during and after the war, Finkelstein brought together leaders from across the religious world.

As he expressed in 1941:

“The Seminary must always call attention to the long-range view… it is a grave matter to enter a war, without adequate military preparation; it may prove fatal to come into peace, without moral and religious preparation. It is with these thoughts in mind… that this Seminary has undertaken various talks looking toward the increase of understanding among various faiths, and also among the various intellectual disciplines, with a view to strengthening the moral and spiritual fiber of the American people. We realize that Judaism as a faith can survive only in an atmosphere of general faith.”⁹


In 1955, sociologist Will Herberg published his manifesto Protestant, Catholic, Jew, a testimony to the status to which Jews had risen in American civil life.¹⁰¹⁰ With synagogues across the suburban landscape of America and Finkelstein’s presence shining forth from 3080 Broadway, Conservative Judaism was at the center of that Jewish presence with the surrounding religious community. And perhaps the title of Herberg’s book manifests the Jews place in American society best: Herberg situated Jews in America alongside Protestants and Catholics as one of three contributors to the “American Way of Life.” Throughout American Jewish history, Jews had to struggle with the dialectical tension of acculturating into the American community while retaining a traditional Jewish life. Now, however, Herberg suggested that it was impossible to be American without being Jewish.

Finkelstein strongly believed that anti-Semitism was rooted in simple ignorance of the American populace. Thus, he brought Judaism to America. If Americans knew about the Jewish people, their behaviors and nationhood, they would welcome them as part of the melting pot. The NBC Eternal Light radio television series brought Judaism to the nation, a fact that Kaplan stressed often:

“The time will come when Jewry will be grateful to Dr. Finkelstein for having widened the horizons of Jewish life in the country, and having taught the Jewish people to realize that it must serve the general community and bring to bear the best in its tradition upon the development of the general life about us.”¹¹





By no means did all Conservative rabbis endorse the Seminary expansion patterns, plans which gave more resources to relationships between world religions than movement synagogues. Conservative Movement luminaries Rabbi Solomon Goldman of Ansche Emet in Chicago and Rabbi Milton Steinberg of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York particularly berated Finkelstein’s efforts.

As Steinberg stated in a draft of a letter to Goldman:

“Too many movements for the vitalization of Conservative Judaism have died amidst those conferences, round-table discussions, etc. of which Dr. Finkelstein is so fond…. My discontent isn’t something that is to be arbitrate[d]…. And last of all, I want the Seminary to take the lead in making Judaism really historical Judaism. That is to say, both traditional and evolving. I want the Seminary to do something practical about the Jewish law of divorce, about Shabbos Observance, Kashruth, about vitalizing Jewish worship. What else are the Seminary and Conservative Judaism for?”¹²

The Conservative movement became the most visible Jewish movement on the American scene during the 1950s, both physically and ideologically. The movement manifested a spirit of religious pluralism, and people felt that it fused both Americanism and Judaism into a reality that did not have to sacrifice one ideal for the sake of another. Of course, sociological realities redefined religion during this period, which certainly no longer meant religion in the form of traditional observance.

But for Finkelstein, this era represented what retrospectively appears to have been prophetic revelation. Though he did not talk of the importance of the synagogue, Finkelstein paved an ideology for reciprocal dialogue between America’s religious communities, a condition that would become essential during the suburban life of America’s Jews, who, for the most part, no longer lived next to other Jews.

At least in the fifties, people flocked to the movement, seeking the pluralistic ideology that Finkelstein had established for the Seminary.


--
1. “A Trumpet for All Israel,” Time, October 15, 1951, 52-59

2. Kaplan Journals, Oct. 17, 1922, in Communings of the Spirit, 169

3. Finkelstein, CJ, Winter 74

4. Finkelstein, “The Jew in 1950,” Conservative Judaism, Vol. VI, No. 4, May, 1950, 1

5. Ibid., 4

6. Ibid., 5

7. Lymon Bryson, Finkelstein, R.M. MacIver, eds., Perspectives on a Troubled Decade (Harper and Brothers, New York: 1950), vi

8. Statement by the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1946 in Michael Greenbaum, Louis Finkelstein and the Conservative Movement, (Binghamton, N.Y. : Global Publications, 2001), 67

9. Report to Board of Directors, 6 April 1941, in Greenbaum, “The Finkelstein Era,” in Tradition Renewed, 167

10. Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in Religious Sociology (New York: Doubleday, 1956)

11. Greenbaum, Louis Finkelstein and the Conservative Movement, 241

12. Jacob J. Weinstein, Solomon Goldman: A Rabbi’s Rabbi (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1973), 44

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

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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