• Israel Talmud Page Full Commentary

    In 1953, Mordecai Kaplan wrote an important volume, A New Zionism.  We asked four contributors to reflect on this question.  

    • What is the new element of a new, New Zionism that needs to be added fifty years later, in 2023?
    • How can the “new element” reflect sensitivity to the present crisis regarding democracy in Israel?  

    Their responses remind us of the complex weaving of the religious, national, and ethical threads of Kaplanian thought.

    The focus on Israel’s rich but delicate place in Kaplanian thought, especially as we move deeper into the 21st century, is also reflected in our April 23rd webinar and an article about a conference staged by The Kaplan Center in Jerusalem this past July.

    From Rabbi Michael M. Cohen

    In A New Zionism (p.93), Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan wrote:

    “It is amazing to note that Ben-Gurion, writing in The New York Times Magazine of March 28, 1954, speaks of ‘the reemergence of the Jewish State,’ as though the State of Israel were the same kind of Jewish state as that which the Romans destroyed in 70 AD…(Kaplan then quotes Herzl) ‘When our work is done, I believe that a Jewish citizen, namely, a citizen of the Jewish State will not be forbidden to marry a foreigner. She will be politically Jewish, irrespective of her religion…Incidentally, you could advance some striking precedents: if I am not mistaken, Moses was married to a Midianite.” 

    Here Kaplan tackles the issue of “Jewish” identity and the State of Israel. It goes back to the nation or religion question of what it means to be a Jew, and in this case the citizen of the Jewish State. For 2,000 years of exile, we presented as a religion to ourselves and the outside world, even as we carried the seeds of national identity within that religious identity. Writing in 1942, Martin Buber wrote in his essay “On Hebrew Humanism”:

    “Israel is not a nation like other nations, no matter how much its representatives have wished it during certain eras. Israel is a people like no other, for it is the only people in the world which, from its earliest beginnings, has been both a nation and a religious community.”  

    That double component of our identity compliments who we are, as well as being the cause of tension, and for some, confusion. What Kaplan offers, in this case of marriage, is that being Jewish in the Jewish state is a condition where the national aspect of that identity takes precedence over the religious composition of that identity. In his eyes, in a nation there are no restrictions on whom you can marry based on your religious or national differences – for Kaplan that included the Jewish State, as Jewish is also a political identity for him. Such an orientation opens many possibilities for the institutions and laws of the Jewish State.

    From Rabbi Barbara Penzner

    One caveat before proposing a new New Zionism, based on Kaplan’s vision:

    As a social justice activist, I have learned the importance of being an ally to the people who are directly affected by injustice. Which means, in terms of Israel today, the vision of Zionism must arise from and be informed by the Israelis who live the Zionist reality every day.

    As allies we might offer perspective to help heal the historic fissures in Israeli society. These rifts are rooted in the experiences and attitudes of waves of immigrants and refugees, and those who have lived on the land for generations. Young secular Israelis today argue that Jewish and Israeli identity need to be uncoupled from religious identity and practice.

    A new New Zionism must ask questions to help imagine a shared civil society for the future, drawing on the past.

    What would distinguish Israel as a country if it were not a Jewish state? 

    What cultural values do the tribes (peoples?) of the land of Israel share, such as the importance of family, hospitality toward the stranger, caring for and about the land, and devotion to the history and memory of the land? Is peoplehood large enough to encompass Israeli citizens who are not Jews?

    Drawing on Kaplan’s ideas, a new New Zionism demands a reckoning with the meaning of peoplehood and Judaism as a civilization.

    • Can the Jews of Israel come together in the name of peoplehood? 
    • Does that concern for peoplehood allow for a respectful relationship with Diaspora Jews?  
    • Is peoplehood large enough to encompass Israeli citizens who are not Jews? 

    Judaism as a civilization may provide a broader framework. 

    • Can the State of Israel understand itself as part of a civilization that encompasses all Jews, not to mention its non-Jewish citizens and residents?
    • What would enable all who dwell in the land to thrive in, contribute to, and feel pride in the State?

    From Rabbi Gail Shuster-Bouskila

    Questions abound about the future essence of Israeli identity; there are many conflicting views on what will happen in the next 75 years of Israeli statehood. Since the beginning of 2023, the State of Israel has been facing fundamental political changes. Obviously when any government decides to amend laws, there are always those who object. However, the recent legislative attempts and backlash have been qualitatively different. A large part of the population, committed to democracy and liberal ideas, has been attending weekly protests across the country due to these changes. 

    Beyond the resistance to changes in the balance of power between the Israeli Supreme Court, the Knesset and the government, many “middle of the road” Israelis wonder about the possibility of Israeli non-orthodox life under increasingly centralized fundamentalist religious rule. Moreover, these Israelis have been motivated to question their support for the government that funds Ultra-orthodox institutions over secular ones because most of those who pay taxes and those doing army service are secular and modern orthodox Israelis (primarily not settlers in the West Bank).

    Recently, I have been looking for encouragement to be able to keep protesting:

    While Kaplan was at times ambivalent about classical Zionism, he was at all times fully devoted to the ethical ideals that he believed were incumbent upon every Jew in every place—and that includes the State of Israel. It was in these ethical ideals, the sum and substance of Jewish peoplehood, that Jewish unity lay and on which Jewish survival depended. 

    Scult, Mel. The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan (The Modern Jewish Experience) (p. 109). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.

    From Dr. Nadav S. Berman

    Israeli Democracy as a Civilization: What Would Mordecai M. Kaplan Think of Today’s Crisis?

    The ongoing democracy crisis in Israel, which started in winter 2023, concerns the question of Israel’s constitutional structure, as well as several foundational problems with which Israeli society has already grappled for a long period: the Arab/Palestinian-Israeli conflict, religion and state (or Judaism and democracy), environmental issues, over-population, and more. Most of these problems were known to Mordecai M. Kaplan, one of the main Jewish thinkers of the 20th century.

    Though Kaplan did not focus on the question of Israel’s constitutional structure, his writing may shed some light about the present democracy crisis. For Kaplan, similar to John Dewey, democracy is more than a mechanism: it is a civilization, a civilizing and educational process, and a moral ethos predicated on religious beliefs, and on a kind of prophetic hope. We may think of three Israeli issues to which Kaplan’s thought may be relevant: (1) Can the Israeli democratic project survive a societal schism? (2) What should be the proper place of religion, or of Judaism, in the public Israeli sphere? (3) And most central for the present legal dispute: Should the governmental (executive) branch override the judicial? Let us consider these questions in turn.

    1. Israeli Society: An influential voice within the Israeli right wing makes use of the Marxist idea of class struggle. This ideational schism is not only opposed to the idea of social cohesion (or in Hebrew, likkud) but also to Israel’s first PM, David Ben-Gurion, who insisted that the Jewish people and Israeli society must shift from class struggle to a nationhood union (mi’maamad le’am, in DBG’s words). Kaplan’s holistic pragmatism would probably reject fiercely the sharp division of Israeli society into oppressors and oppressed, which makes it much harder to create a shared and productive discussion about amending and ameliorating problems, in the spirit of Ethical Nationhood. Kaplan held that distributive justice is indispensable concern for democratic societies. Marxism, however, is more helpful in analyzing social gaps than in getting to solve them, precisely because Marxism usually dissects society, while social repair requires a sense of constructive groupness.
    1. Religion and State: Kaplan believed wholeheartedly in the constitutional separation of church and state, or religion and state as it is termed today. However, based on what Kaplan wrote in Judaism as a Civilization (pp. 76-79), the ‘Catholic’ component in Jewish collectivity may require a different setting than the (allegedly ‘Protestant’) one deployed in the USA; this in fact might be true for any other nation-state. Would Kaplan be satisfied with the contemporary centralization of the center-left public opinion in Israel, which is a dramatic result of the public protest against the legal overhaul? Kaplan would obviously be hesitant, as he knew very well the pitfalls of nationalism in the 20th century, but he might be thinking that a democratic spirit must involve a capacity to understand (and even sympathize) with humanist religious commitments of one’s public; and after all, most Jewish Israelis are pro-traditional in one way or another. Such a pragmatist inspired acknowledgment may help in deliberating how the flaws in Israel’s religious institutions could be amended in a non-illusory manner.
    1. Kaplan had no illusions about the dangers of absolutist governments. He would thus, I believe, be deeply concerned by the (admittedly dictatorial) attempt to give the government the ability to alter the Supreme Court’s juridical body, surely when its Prime Minister is on trial and has an undeniable conflict of interest. Kaplan, as any sober fallibilist, would think that no legal system is infallible. However, constitutional maneuvers should not (surely from a Conservative point of view) be conducted so rapidly, while rushing relevant Knesset Committee discussions in a way which resembles a putsch rather than a beit midrash. Would Kaplan support President Herzog’s “People’s Outline”? Hard to tell. But he would probably think that the dialogue, the negotiation path, are crucial. Both sides should get out of their comfort zone. This is maybe the only way that the Israeli democratic middle can be released from the tenacious grasping of the powerful extremists of all camps. 

    Kaplan’s Zionism, then, remains a source of inspiration, in cases when his pragmatist opinion remained valid for us, as well as in cases where his radical opinion needs some revisions. In fact, in an age when a convicted terror activist was appointed by Netanyahu as a minister in Israel’s government, the tension between pragmatism and radicalism is worthy of further reflection. Kaplan, like most intellectuals, embraced both pragmatism and radicalism, at times even dogmatism. In any event, his penetrating understanding of Jewish civilizational processes more broadly, remains vital and stimulating. 

    From Rabbi Bob Gluck

    Givat Haviva, Israel and a vision of a shared society, in light of Mordecai Kaplan’s teachings
    November 6, 2023


    Maybe it is precisely during times when peace between Jews and Palestinians seems most distant and unattainable that it is most essential for us to maintain a long view. As difficult as this may seem to place the politics aside, Israel’s sustainable, secure, and just existence may well depend upon some vision of a shared society. Concurrent with the unabating struggles regarding the West Bank and Gaza, there are cities and villages within Israel that have mixed or adjoining Jewish and Palestinian/Arab populations.


    The ability of such communities to support and rely upon mechanisms for constructive coexistence and, ideally, cooperation requires constant attention, skill, and commitment. Yet, as is well known, Jewish and Arab youth in Israel, to offer one example, lead substantially segregated lives. Fewer than ten percent have relationships with young people in communities of “the other.” Mordecai Kaplan’s conception of Zionism placed the land of Israel at the center of a revitalized international Jewish people. Kaplan’s Zionism predates the founding of the State of Israel and as articulated in 1934 in his foundational book Judaism as a Civilization, represented a minority view. Kaplan advocated or a Land of Israel, but not necessarily a national state, that would become a radiating center of Jewish culture, creative ideas, and energy for Diaspora communities, including the United States. One of those principles would be democracy and coexistence, not only within Jewish society, but a building block of justice of coexistence within Israel between Jews and its Arab inhabitants. In March 1937, during a period of violence, he wrote in The Reconstructionist, “lasting peace in Palestine will not be realized until Zionists formulate a clear and unequivocal program of cooperation with the Arab people.” As Rabbi David Teutsch summarizes in an article on the Reconstructing Judaism website (May 4, 2016), “for Reconstructionist ideology the long-term safety of a Jewish state is dependent upon the triumph of liberty and social justice not only for Israelis but for Arabs as well.”

    Coexistence between Jews and Palestinians/Arabs within Israel is thus at the heart of Kaplan’s vision of Zionism, as it has remained within the Reconstructionist movement. In fact, there are several shared society institutions in Israel. While the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam may be better known to our readers, one of the longest-standing is Givat Haviva, founded in 1949. Its programming is focused on an educational model for young people that bridges divisions and seeks to build and sustain dialog and partnerships that span historically divided communities, particularly between neighboring Israeli Jewish and Arab towns, villages, and regional councils. The goal is to foster mutual understanding and realize mutually shared needs and interests. Its work also contributes to knowledge available for communities outside Israel to address conflict resolution and coexistence. For more information about these projects: https://www.givathaviva.org/Partnering-to-Advance-Mutual-Interests

    Givat Haviva runs programming within public schools and maintains an international residential secondary school that offers an International Baccalaureate Diploma. Regarding these school programs, see: https://www.givathaviva.org/index.php?dir=site&page=content&cs=3177.

    For more than two decades, Givat Haviva has also sponsored a mixed youth photography program, Through Other’s Eyes. By literally and metaphorically looking through each other’s “lenses,” high school students learn to better understand the lives of their peers. This is achieved through their shared artistic endeavors and
    by facilitating visits to each other’s homes, families and communities. Friendships are built and
    relationships between communities built and maintained. About the various Arts projects that take
    place at Givat Haviva, see https://www.artcenter.org.il/cgi-webaxy/item?531.

    Givat Haviva is also involved in a wide range of projects promoting social equality within Israel. For more
    information: https://www.givathaviva.org/Equality.

    I am writing during the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israeli communities in the South of the country. Thus it is worth noting that Givat Haviva has been active engaged in providing emergency aid for Israelis, including housing more than 200 people who have been displaced from their homes. For all these reasons, the work of Givat Haviva is a model of Kaplanian ideals in practice: shared society, justice, democracy, and equality. For more information, please see https://www.givathaviva.org/Mission-Statement.

    •

    Margie Jacobs

    •

  • Hearing God’s Voice: Two Models for Accepting the Torah

    by Samuel Fleischacker, Ph.D. — Philosophy Department, University of Illinois-Chicago

    (We are grateful to TheTorah.com – Project TABS for permission to republish this essay, which first appeared there — please see www.TheTorah.com.)

    Abstract:  We would like clear evidence that the Torah is God’s word — if God has spoken to us, we would like to know that God has spoken.  But mature, reflective religious belief needs to be based on the recognition that we cannot have such evidence.  I contrast here the model of revelation we yearn for with the model of revelation we should accept on reflection by considering two moments in the Bible at which the people gather to hear God’s word:  the assembly at Sinai, in Exodus, and the assembly in a Jerusalem square, in Nehemiah.  The latter provides us with a better model, I suggest, for how to regard the Torah today.  This has implications for Mosaic authorship, the interpretation of the Torah, and the development of halakha.

    Under Sinai or in the Jerusalem Square?

    The revelation at Sinai, as described in the Torah, provides an immensely appealing model of what it might be like for God to speak to us.  We experience there uncanny thunder and lightning, perhaps synaesthetically, above which a voice with no discernible human source addresses us; the voice tells us that the Speaker has carried out our recent redemption from great oppression, and that that redemption has prepared us for a covenant with our Redeemer.[1] We then receive a series of commands that fit well with what we might expect a divine being to ask of us.  This, surely, is how God should speak to us, if God speaks to people at all.  Here, if anywhere, is the kind of experience we want to have as a ground for our religious commitments — a moment of contact with God that we can immediately and wholly recognize as contact with God.  It is the sort of moment that mystics and meditators seek, and that some in our tradition have urged us to try to achieve by way of hitbodedut (meditative solitude), or all-night study, or lengthy and heartfelt prayer.

    But in the end this model of religious grounding is untenable.  Many philosophers over the past two centuries have argued persuasively that direct experience, and the certainty that accompanies it, need not yield knowledge.[2] And indeed we recognize this in ordinary life.  How many times have you felt certain that you perceived something only to realize later that you were mistaken (your eyes fooled you, or what you saw was misleading, or you have mis-remembered it)?  Nor does the group character of the experience at Sinai necessarily correct for such errors:  prejudice and illusion can mislead entire populations (in the perception of witchcraft, for instance).  Moreover, the Torah itself seems to teach us that direct contact with God doesn’t have a lasting impact on people: consider how the people run out, shortly after Sinai, to worship the Golden Calf.

    A better model for the ground of religious commitment, I suggest, is the assembly of the people to hear Ezra and his entourage read the Torah aloud in the book of Nehemiah.

    The assembly in Nehemiah presents itself as a sort of “re-do” of the assembly at Sinai.  On both occasions, the people gather together to hear God’s word.  On the first occasion they say “We will do and we will listen,” but then proceed not to carry out the law they receive;  on the second occasion, they do not say anything quite so noble, but they ask to hear the law, and they set out to fulfill one aspect of it (Sukkot) immediately after the recitation (Neh 8:1, 14-17).[3]  There are also subtler parallels.  Ezra had led the people out of a captivity in Babylonia,[4] at the behest of the (arguably miraculous) goodwill of the Persian king Artaxerxes.[5] That Persian king also admonished him to set up a judicial structure (Ezra 7:25) much like the one Moses had established on the advice of a non-Israelite— Jethro — just before the Sinaitic revelation (Exod. 18:17-22).  And the Ezraitic exodus began, like the Mosaic one, with the crossing of a great body of water (Ezra 8:21, 31), albeit a non-miraculous one, and was seen as involving God’s protection throughout (Ezra 8:31).  The parallels between Moses and Ezra, and between the two exoduses, are no doubt supposed to be obvious to the people in Nehemiah, and just in case they are not, Ezra recounts both histories, implicitly linking them, right after the assembly (Neh. 9).

    In Rabbinic writings, Moses and Ezra are explicitly compared to one another:  the rabbis say that Ezra was worthy of giving the Torah to Israel had Moses not preceded him (b.Sanhedrin 21b).  The acceptance of the Torah represented by the Ezraitic assembly is indeed sometimes taken to be a freer, more whole-hearted covenant with God than the acceptance of the Torah at Sinai. One major difference between the Ezraitic assembly and the Sinaitic one is that, as Ezra reads the Torah, members of his entourage explain it “so that the people understand it” (Neh. 8:7-9, 13);  another, already noted, is that the people rush out afterwards to perform one of the commands they have heard.

    Both differences suggest that this time the people are really taking on the Torah for themselves — which, say some, redeems the “threat” aspect of the earlier, Sinaitic covenant.  A famous Midrash on the phrase b’tachtit ha-har in Exod. 19:17 presents God as holding Sinai over the Israelites’ heads and threatening to kill them if they refuse the Torah (b. Shabbat88a).  But no covenant, under Jewish law itself, is valid if accepted under a threat.  So it took the free-willed covenant under Ezra — where the people asked to have the law read to them, were helped to understand it, and went out to perform it — to redeem Sinai.

    I want to suggest that in other ways as well the Ezraitic covenant is a better model for religious commitment than the Sinaitic one.

    Ezraitic Covenant

    Consider first the reasons why one might be inclined to dismiss the Ezraitic covenant.  If Sinai is a model of immediacy and certainty in one’s relationship to God, and of love and gratitude for God’s goodness to us, the Ezraitic assembly is a model of mediation and uncertainty, and of more muted feelings about God’s role in the world.

    We don’t see any clear miracles in the Ezra story, after all.  I’ve suggested that we can construe Cyrus’s goodwill towards the Jews as miraculous, but that’s a loose use of the word, of the sort one might invoke when a job or love relationship works out, not a literal overturning of the natural order.  The same goes for the fact that the people come through their journey safely.  One could attribute this to God, but one doesn’t have to:  no natural laws are broken.  And the assembly itself takes place without thunder and lightning or mysterious voices.  In the Ezraitic story, God is present only if you choose to see God there;  in the Mosaic story, God is present emphatically and unavoidably.

    Perhaps this is one reason why the people need someone to help explain God’s word to them in the Ezraitic story, while in the Mosaic story they seem to understand it for themselves.  The Ezraitic story models our relationship to God as something we need to work on, think about, have explained to us, something we can, in the end, choose either to see or not to see;  the Mosaic story models our relationship to God as something that comes forcefully to us directly from God, and in which we can bask, without work or choice.

    If we compare our God-relationships to our erotic relationships (as many religious traditions, including our own, often do), Sinai is like the consummation of a first love, while the Ezraitic assembly is like a second wedding, or the decision of an estranged couple to patch things up and move on.  If we compare our God-relationships to stages in human development (as many religious traditions, including our own, also often do), Sinai is like the wondrous first discovery of the world by a young child, while the Ezraitic assembly is like the acceptance of the world by a “sadder and wiser” adult, aware that childish innocence is no longer possible for her.

    But it is all these mediated, uncertain, work-demanding, choice-demanding, sadder and wiser features of the Ezraitic story that lead me to commend it.  For they are features ofmaturity, of the way we relate to the world once we recognize that childish innocence is indeed no longer possible for us.  To come back from love and human development to our relationship with God:  We may hope, when young, for a clear assurance of God’s existence and concern for us — unshakeable proofs of God, or direct experiences of Him — but we learn as adults that in fact the best we can do is make efforts to perceive God, dimly, through the veils of happenstance and triviality we encounter daily, to interpret the facts of our moral lives, and texts of our religion, in a way that allows us some fair confidence that God is there.

    This is certainly the preferred view of God in the Jewish tradition — a God whose face is often hidden from us (hester panim), whose Name is unspeakable, who does not incarnate as a human being for all to encounter and who is available primarily via law and study, not mystical visions.  We are pre-Messianic, not Messianic:  we hope for a direct relationship with God in the future while simply waiting for it now.  We have also been suspicious, generally, of Messianic — utopian — political movements.  We are known for our pragmatism, our willingness to make compromises and to be satisfied with a less-than-perfect society.

    In all these ways, we insist on the importance of living with uncertainty and incompleteness, working and choosing to bring out what is godly in human existence rather than expecting it to appear before us, and living with a degree of sadness or resignation rather than unmitigated joy — even if we continue to hold out, as an ultimate ideal, a direct, clear, joyful encounter with God in the Messianic era.  We project a Sinaitic relationship to God as an ideal for the future, while in the present we are the children of Ezra:  asking for a Torah that needs interpretation, and from whose words divinity glints out fitfully, not as a constant and irresistible light.

    The Ezraitic Torah

    This brings us to the question of what sort of Torah a mature believer of the Ezraitic stripe might expect to find.  Here I want to join up with, but also alter, a set of points made by David Weiss-Halivni, in his Revelation Restored.[6]  Halivni supposes that the text of the Torah presented by Ezra to the people was “maculated” — blemished — and that that explains the oddities and contradictions that historical critics have emphasized in it.  We received a perfect Torah from Moses, suggests Halivni, but we sinned, turning to idolatry, and in consequence, the text that came down over the generations was corrupted.  Fortunately, the priestly line that Ezra inherited had preserved oral traditions that compensate for these corruptions, so we can approximate the original, perfect Torah by interpreting the written text we have in light of the oral Torah.  We can, then, reconcile an acknowledgment of much that historical critics say about the Torah with the idea that it is still, at its core, God’s word.

    I think the idea that the Torah of Ezra’s time was, for good theological reasons, the complex, puzzling text we have now, filled with what at least seem to be strands produced by different people at different historical moments, is a nice one.  But I see no reason to call these features of the text “maculations,” as Halivni does. Rather, it seems to me that the Ezraitic believer does not expect God’s revelation to come in a transparent, ahistorical form:  she expects instead precisely to have to struggle, along with her community, to bring out what God wants of her, through layers of commands and narratives that have held different meanings in different historical eras.

    The Ezraitic believer expects a hidden God to communicate through hidden meanings (as both Maimonideans and Kabbalists have indeed always construed the Torah), and does not worry if the text presented to her as divine contains contradictions and repetitions and anachronisms and passages that are morally or theologically troubling:  so long as all these problems can be overcome through midrash or allegory or other religious modes of interpretation.  Indeed, these problems then become opportunities to seek God’s teachings — marks of God’s goodness rather than blemishes.

    To return to our love analogy:  the bride and bridegroom under a chuppah for a second wedding, or the first spouses who have realized how much they love each other after a great fight, do not say to themselves, “I’ll accept this person in spite of her blemishes.”  They say, “She is not blemished – she is my b’sheret, my designated one, even if I need to work on myself and our relationship to make that clear to myself.”  To recognize the messy, historically marked character of the Torah (if God is to speak kileshon bnei adam — in human language — God’s speech must be messy and historically marked) is not to call it blemished, to wish we had a less flawed revelation instead:  it is to recognize the very effort we need to make to interpret the Torah as itself part of what God wants us to do with that book.  We do not marry the Torah wishing we had a different bride or bridegroom; we marry it out of love for its very complexities.

    Mosaic Authorship

    As the reader may have guessed, I think the Ezraitic believer also need not worry about whether Moses was the author of the Torah — nor indeed about whether there ever was a Moses, or an exodus, or a miraculous revelation at Sinai.  The point, for the mature religious believer, is whether God is the author of this text, whether God is communicating to us through it, not whether Moses did.  And to answer that question, historical facts are irrelevant.  God, after all, is not on any theological view a grand chronicler in the sky, or a professional historian who just wants us to get the past right.  If God communicates with us, it is presumably for the same reason that God is presented as communicating with Adam and Noah and Abraham and Moses:  because God wants us to do something, because God has ethical expectations of us.

    And to communicate these ethical expectations, the history in which they are embedded need not be accurate.  The history in the Torah serves heuristic purposes, after all — serves to explain the need for or purpose of various norms.  The story of Pharaoh’s oppression of us and our exodus from it provides a powerful context for our observance of Torah law, and the story of Abraham’s concern for justice and Joseph’s concern for family reconciliation also illuminate that law, regardless of whether they reflect a historical reality.

    Keeping the Torah Contemporary

    To the people of Ezra’s time the story of the Torah as a whole may have resonated strongly with their own experience as captives in Babylon who had been redeemed to (re-)build Judea, or with their struggle to remain faithful to their ancient practices rather than assimilating to the ways of their neighbors.  To us today, it may resonate with our attempt to remain faithful to a hidden, ungraspable God, amid a world of Christians, New Age spiritualists, and secular humanists, all of whom find our religious commitments remote or stodgy.  But in each generation the Torah‘s narratives must speak to the situation of the people who read themthen, if they are to mean something religiously at all.  I must see myself as having come out of Egypt at every seder;  it is not good enough to think that my ancestors did that.

    This requires us constantly to re-work the meaning of the stories recounted in the Torah, and pushes their historicity out of view.  The fact that they spoke to previous generations does not of itself help us now, and their being historically true, even if they are that in every detail, would not help us in the slightest.  By the same token, their not being historically true, even if they are that in every detail, does not harm us, does not derogate from their being able to speak to us now.  For the Torah is not a history book, but an ethical teaching, something that tells us how we ought to live.  A faithful Jew today, as in every prior generation, needs to take seriously the idea that this book somehow contains his or her primary guide to how to live — contains what God wants Jews to do.  But he or she does not need to take seriously the idea that the Torah also tells us, literally, how the world or the Jewish people were formed.

    In the past, this was more obvious to the mainstream Jewish tradition than it is today.  Neither Maimonides nor the Kabbalists took the history of the Torah terribly seriously, even if they didn’t doubt its accuracy (something that was, after all, not in serious question in their day).  Both indeed thought that over-emphasizing the literal level of the Torah was a sin.  A passage in the Zohar (III:152a) puts this nicely:

    Rabbi Simeon said:  Alas for the man who regards the Torah as a book of mere tales and [worldly] matters.  If this were so, we might even today write a Torah dealing in such matters and still more excellent. … The tales of the Torah are only her outward garments.  If anyone should suppose that the Torah herself is this garment and nothing else, let him give up the ghost.  Such a man will have no share in the world to come. … [W]hen fools see a man in a garment that seems beautiful to them, they do not look more closely.  But more important than the garment is the body, and more important than the body is the soul.  So likewise the Torah has a [garment, a body and a soul].  Fools see only the garment, which is the narrative part of the Torah … Those who know more see not only the garment but also the body that is under the garment.  But the truly wise, the servants of the Supreme King, those who stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, look only upon the soul, which is the true foundation of the entire Torah, and one day indeed it will be given them to behold the innermost soul of the Torah.[7]

    The “soul” of the Torah, then, is not the history it tells, and that history, like the garment on a person, need not even tell us accurately what the Torah’s “body” is like.  The narrative surface of the Torah is at best a clue, a guide, to the treasure that lies beneath, or a way of tempting us to uncover that treasure.

    Living Midrashically in a Literalist Age

    Today we live in an obsessively literal and historicist age.  If a person or a document does not tell us the literal truth, we say it is not telling us the truth at all.  We have lost the habit of allegorical reading, and treat midrash with a condescending smile, as if it were a game of scant importance.  We don’t talk or think much about moral truth and don’t expect philosophical theories to be susceptible of truth or falsehood.  Under the impact of science, we want claims that are supposed to be true to be provable, and in the realm of history, that means that evidence like eye-witness testimony, or archeological data, should underwrite them.  Perhaps we recognize in literature classes that this obsession with data can be a bit absurd — does the history of Macbeth’s composition tell us its “real meaning”? — but then again literature classes are like midrash:  not something to take seriously.

    I have argued elsewhere that this obsession with literality, when applied to religious claims, is a form of idolatry.[8]  A God whose presence at moments in space and time could be verified or falsified would be a limited force within our spatio-temporal world, not the Creator and Governor of everything — a Jupiter- or Zeus-like being, rather than the God beyond all gods we are supposed to worship.  To want to know that God is here at a certain time, or was at Sinai at a certain time, or spoke to Moses or authored the Torah at a certain time, is to try to reduce God to something smaller and less significant than God is supposed to be.  But only if we want to reduce God in this way, to make the claims of the Torah susceptible of scientific proof, do we need to understand those claims as literal:  do we need to dismiss midrash.

    By contrast, if we adopt the more expansive, challenging conception of God I think we are supposed to have — if we recognize that God can, among other things, challenge our conceptions of science and proof themselves — we will find ourselves required to engage in midrash.

    As I have also argued elsewhere,[9] the literalist, scientific conception of truth, in which we try to verify sentences one by one with logical or empirical tests, can and has in the past been subordinated to another conception of truth.  On this other conception, truth is primarily applied to people, not sentences;  we are primarily concerned with whether we can trust certain people to lead us in a good direction.  This sort of truth is etymologically related to “troth” — as in “plighting one’s troth” — which literally means “trust.”  And the Torah uses the word “truth” (emet) primarily in this way.  Moses is told to seek out “people of truth” (anshe emet) as judges and Abraham’s servant asks Laban and Bethuel to deal with him “in kindness and truth” (Exod. 18:21; Gen. 24:48-9).

    But a person can be trustworthy whose individual sentences are on occasion untrue:  someone who guides you to a better way of living may have to get you there via myths, gnomic sayings, and metaphor.  Accordingly, a Torah that is true in the direction-guiding way — a trustworthy Torah — need not and probably cannot be literally true at the same time:  especially if it is supposed to express the will of an essentially mysterious God.  We will therefore need constantly to understand it midrashically.

    This willingness to live midrashically, to give up on literalism, marks the wisdom of the Ezraitic believer.  Only with a midrashic sensibility can we move towards a God beyond all limits, beyond the grasp of all fixed concepts and beyond, therefore, all proof or falsification.  The childlike directness of a literalist mentality leads by contrast to a limited god who is less than God;  it is a form of idolatry.

    Interpretation and Halakha

    This brings me to my final point:  how, on the model I am proposing, we should understand the members of Ezra’s entourage who explain the text to the people during the great assembly in Nehemiah, and what we should take their role to signify as regards interpreting the Torah today.  Clearly, these interpreters are given some authority by the people, and are presented as a model for how Jews should appropriate the Torah going forward.

    In what does their authority consist?  Halivni suggests that they had access to an oral tradition passed down over generations that corrected errors in the text and resolved tensions between its parts.  However, there is no suggestion of such an oral tradition anywhere in Ezra or Nehemiah, or indeed elsewhere in the Tanakh, and it is implausible in any case that a group would pass down an intact oral tradition alongside a blemished written text.  If we look at the language of Nehemiah — verses 8:7-8, which repeatedly use the verb mevin and talk of reading the Torah meforash and giving the people sekhel:  all of which are terms for making things clear, and imparting everyday understanding — it seems far more likely that the interpreters provided commonsensical readings of the text.  Perhaps they used one part of it, or its overall themes and structure, to illuminate other parts (e.g., using Exod. 25:6, as Rashi does, to understand elohim in Exod. 7:1 as “judge” rather than “God.”)   Their authority would then rest simply in their greater familiarity with the whole book, in the way that someone who has read a lot of Joyce may be an authority for a new reader of Ulysses.

    Alternatively, perhaps Ezra’s entourage used a knowledge of Hebrew — the people spoke Aramaic — to explain puzzling words.  Or they may have employed more elaborate hermeneutical tools.  It is unlikely, as a historical matter, that they were either philosophers[10] or midrashists like the Tannaim, but it is not unlikely that occasionally they explained verses in accordance with their best rational understanding of what a morally good God would say, or by way of the subtle cues and plays on words that midrash was later to employ.[11]

    In any case, the text of Nehemiah clearly suggests that the interpreters made the best plain sense of the text they could to the people who were listening to them, that they employed methods that made hermeneutic sense in the context of their place and time, and that what they said was not necessarily supposed to hold for other generations, in other circumstances.  The idea that the Torah needs a fixed mode of interpretation, passed down intact from generation to generation, is not implied by Nehemiah, which indicates instead that the Torah needs, in every generation, to make sense to the people of that generation.

    This is not to throw out centuries of interpretation, or to opt for a relativistic program of the form, “the Torah means whatever we want it to mean.”  Halivni rightly points out that the people in the Ezra story sought a way of understanding the law that they could implement,as a people, and that that requires some standardized way of resolving puzzles in the text.[12]  There is also an important difference, ignored or dismissed by faddish literary critics, between a mode of interpretation that makes sense of a text and a mode that makes it yield up what the listener wants to hear.  Making sense has standards, if ones that are difficult to pin down, and when we try honestly to make sense of a text, we will often find that it tells us something quite other than what we want it to say.

    Finally, making sense of a text that issues in moral and legal norms generally requires bringing the norms one sees in it into as much coherence as possible with the norms that have been seen in it in the past.  Moral and legal norms generally should hold over generations, even if they need to be adapted to some extent in each new generation, and the Torah’s laws, often explicitly described as binding for all eternity, are certainly of that form.  These pragmatic concerns are enough to vindicate a strong respect for tradition, in making halakhic decisions.[13] But if we take the assembly in Nehemiah as our model for how we should receive the Torah, we should note that it implies strongly that the Torah must make sense to each generation that receives it.  And that surely requires of us a flexible halakhic tradition rather than a fixed one.

    Conclusion

    I have presented here more an alternative picture of revelation and its reception — of what it means for God to speak to us and us to listen — than a detailed argument about how that process might work.  But often we need a new picture more than we need new arguments:[14]  arguments simply work within the ambit of pictures (paradigms, models) that we already hold.  If the Ezraitic picture I am proposing fits in with Jewish theology, gives us a role in receiving revelation that makes both theological and ethical sense, and endorses flexible modes of interpreting the Torah, then it is, I submit, far more attractive than a picture on which God’s presence in revelation must be obvious to us, and our role is to stand in that presence passively.  It is almost an after-thought that the Ezraitic picture also allows us to recognize the Torah as a complex, historically shaped document while still embracing it as God’s word.

    There is far more to be said about the implications of the Ezraitic model for both theology and halakha.  But I hope I have said enough to show how it can provide a valuable jumping-off point for those of us who seek an understanding of the Torah that coheres with modern science, history, and morality.

    Footnotes:

    [1] Scholars today see many different strands in the story of revelation at Sinai, and the version I give represents just some of these.  For a more nuanced view, see Marc Brettler, “’Fire, Cloud, and Deep Darkness’ (Deut 5:22):  Deuteronomy’s Recasting of Revelation,” inThe Significance of Sinai: Traditions About Sinai and Divine Revelation in Judaism and Christianity. Ed. George J. Brooke et al.. (Leiden:  EJ Brill, 2008), and the sources cited therein.

    [2] The most powerful arguments of this sort are to be found in the section on “Sense-Certainty” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, in the so-called “Private Language Argument” that runs through the first 250 sections or so of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein’s On Certainty is also relevant) and in Wilfred Sellars’ attack on “the myth of the given” in his Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.

    [3] Both stories are also nested in wider covenantal narratives.  Ezra’s speech in Neh 9-10 contains practically all the elements of standard ancient covenants that scholars have long found in the Torah:  a preamble explaining God’s right to obedience, terms of the covenant, and witnesses.  The one thing that’s missing is rewards and punishments, although these may be implied by 9:25, 27-8 and 33-7.

    [4] Ezra characterizes the people as more than just captives but “slaves” under foreign rule: avadim anachnu (Ezra  9:9;  Neh 9:36).  In fact, he suggests that they are still slaves even after he has brought them home.  It is not clear what he means by this, but he does take the return home to be an alleviation of that slavery, and in any case, his use of the word avadim(especially when one takes Neh 9:36 together with Neh 9:17-18) evokes the slavery of Egypt.

    [5] Isaiah 44;28 reads Cyrus as an agent of God.  My thanks to Marc Brettler for pointing out the relevance of this text to my argument.

    [6] Halivni, Revelation Restored:  Divine Writ and Critical Responses, (Boulder, CO:  Westview Press, 1998)

    [7] Quoted in Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (NY:  Schocken, 1965), p.64.  See also the discussion of this and related texts in Frank Talmage, “Apples of Gold: The Inner Meaning of Sacred Texts in Medieval Judaism,” in Arthur Green, ed., Jewish Spirituality, (New York, 1986), vol. 1, especially 324-5.

    [8] See Fleischacker, Divine Teaching and the Way of the World (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2011), pp.24-27.

    [9] See Fleischacker, Divine Teaching, pp.42-44.

    [10] Even on quite late datings of these books, Greek thought is unlikely to have penetrated Judea much, and the time-frame of the events that actually take place in Ezra-Nehemiah precedes the birth of Socrates.

    [11] Halivni himself sees proto-Rabbinic tendencies at work in the roughly contemporaneous books of Chronicles:  Revelation Restored, pp.25-6.

    [12] Halivni, Restoration Restored, pp.26-7.

    [13] I suspect that most modern Orthodox Jews stick with Orthodox halakha largely for pragmatic reasons, especially in the face of the failure of progressive Jewish movements to sustain halakhic commitment in their laity

    [14] Compare Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. GEM Anscombe, second edition, (Oxford:  Basil Blackwell, 1958):  “A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”

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    Hirsch Fishman

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  • Kaplan and Birmingham

    Kaplan and Birmingham (1963)

    While working on a project for The Ira and Judith Kaplan Eisenstein Reconstructionist Archives of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (https://www.correspondingwithkaplan.com/), I came across a letter to Mordecai Kaplan from Rabbi Everett Gendler, a prominent student of Kaplan’s who is still living, thanking Kaplan for his speech to the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly (RA) convention of 1963 and for his role in “ma[king] it possible for the Rabbinical Assembly to speak as it should have on the Birmingham Situation.”

    Gendler, a member of the convention’s program committee, had in the previous year participated in prayer vigils and protests in Albany, Georgia, in support of Civil Rights. He led a group of 19 Conservative rabbis who left the 1963 RA convention to go to Birmingham, Alabama to support Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in their on-going efforts to desegregate the city. (To learn more about Rabbi Gendler, click here.) King’s campaign was front-page news at the time because of the city’s use of attack dogs and high-pressure water cannons on protesters of all ages and its arrest of more than a thousand activists.

    The RA delegation to Birmingham, the first to be sent to the South by a major American Jewish religious denomination, has a storied place in the history of American Jews and the Civil Rights movement. Kaplan, however, is never associated with it. I wondered: What is Gendler’s letter referring to? I found the answer in Kaplan’s diaries and in the 1963 volume of the Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly.

    The story begins in January of 1963, when Gendler invites Kaplan to speak at the upcoming RA convention on the topic of “Judaism and Modern War.” Soon afterwards, Kaplan records a remarkable story in his diary (February 11, 1963). At his wife Rivka’s suggestion, Kaplan interrupts his work on the manuscript of The Purpose and Meaning of Jewish Existence (1964) to watch a television interview with Erich Fromm, in which Fromm states that the significant possibility of nuclear war makes it unlikely that humanity will have a future. Kaplan is “shattered” by this comment because he considers Fromm to be “the most sane thinker in the contemporary world.” He immediately wonders what he can do to make nuclear war less likely:

    The first thing that came to my mind was why not enact a spectacular suicide and leave behind a statement giving as a reason the need of calling the attention of mankind to the urgency of forestalling the outbreak of a third World War, and calling upon outstanding thinkers, scientists, writers, clergymen to do likewise. Such a call would be futile unless the one who issued it set an example. Unfortunately, I am not built for a heroic act of that kind.

    But Kaplan does not let the issue rest. The following morning, after “recall[ing] what I had said on many an occasion that the only justification for organized religion is the function of putting an end to international and civil wars,” he decides to add the following to the “Epilogue” of The Purpose and Meaning of Jewish Existence:

    We Jews have a Day of Atonement for fasting and prayer, for the forgiveness of sins and the resolve to improve morally and spiritually. If we are to take ourselves and our religion seriously, we should observe the Day of Atonement primarily as a day of protest against the waging of war, and of appeal to all other spiritual bodies also to dedicate a day for fasting and prayer for like protest. Then will those in the seats of authority among the nations of the world be impelled to give heed, and use their power, to render the earth safe for mankind. (318-319)

    Kaplan considers this “a highly important innovation in the observance of Yom Kippur,” but, perhaps realizing that more dramatic actions would be necessary for religion to significantly impact the cause of peace, he decides to use his talk at the RA to urge it to “initiate action to call into being a World Parliament of Religions for the purpose of making the abolition of war the primary aim of organized religion, and second, of appealing to all the governments to transform their war industries into peace industries.”

    Meeting in mid-March with Louis Finkelstein, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), and Saul Lieberman, the Seminary’s Distinguished Research Professor of Talmud, Kaplan requests that the JTS faculty endorse the proposal to convene a World Parliament of Religions with the aforementioned aims. Kaplan records in his diary that Lieberman was against the idea because “it might be interpreted by Russia as a sign of weakness of the Western powers.” In response, Kaplan argued that the West would not cease its “defense activities” until Russia agreed to disarm and that “we owe it to ourselves as Jews and to the world to contribute to whatever efforts are to be made for human survival, regardless of our being heeded or ignored on the principle of אם ישמעו ואם יחדלו [“Whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear” Ezekiel 2:5]. In the end, Liberman “consented” to Kaplan’s idea, and Finkelstein promised to bring it up for discussion at the next faculty meeting.

    Finkelstein never acted on this pledge and when Kaplan complained, Finkelstein reminded him of the 4-page letter (dated March 29, 1963) that he had written to Everett Gendler and copied to Kaplan, in which he explained his inaction. (At Kaplan’s urging, Gendler had written Finkelstein on March 26 to seek the support of the JTS faculty for the proposal to convene a World Parliament of Religions, which the RA would debate at its May convention.) Both letters are housed at the Reconstructionist Archives.

    Finkelstein’s letter is a fascinating read. He begins by noting that the Seminary has a wise tradition of “never pass[ing] on resolutions about actions to be taken outside of its specific domain—which is, running the Seminary.” Finkelstein asserts that this is a tradition that Kaplan endorses and “even insists upon.” Finkelstein then argues that peace will not come about by resolutions—the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, for example, did not prevent World War II. Rather, “[t]he road to peace is along the path of improved moral standards by all of us, and this improvement means … trying to be wide-awake to the moral implications of everything we do in all our relationships.” Finkelstein attributes this insight to Kaplan as well, an assertion with some merit [see, Mordecai Kaplan, The Future of the American Jew (1948), 349-350]. Moreover, Finkelstein continues, a World Parliament of Religions could only come about after behind-the-scenes negotiations with representatives of all major religions and Jews, or at least “Zionist Jews,” could not take the lead in this quiet diplomacy “because of the nature of the present situation in which Israel and the Arabs are involved.” Finkelstein then warns Gendler (and Kaplan) that a World Parliament of Religions “would not be an easy conference” for the West and for Jews, in particular:

    At the television conference in which I participated, there was a Hindu lady and an ambassador from Sierra Leone. The Hindu lady, who is a very distinguished person, raised a question which I had never heard raised before. She asked why it was that people in India are under the necessity of studying western languages and also the history of the western countries, whereas we, in the West, feel under no obligation to study their languages or their history. I feel quite certain that if a world conference of religious leaders were convoked for the outlawing of war, its Asian and African members would also want to deal with some of these problems. One issue which might be raised to embarrass its Jewish representatives, would be the internationalization of Jerusalem. Another might be the problem of the Arab refugees. The situation, alas, is full of pitfalls. I imagine that is why this conference has thus far not been held.

    Finkelstein concludes his letter diplomatically: “Having said all this, I would be delighted to talk to you about the whole situation, and of course, would be honored if Prof. Kaplan would wish to join us. With warmest regards, Affectionately, as ever.” Considering the content of Finkelstein’s reply, it is hard not to question his sincerity.

    Neither Kaplan nor Gendler was deterred by Finkelstein’s arguments. Kaplan’s talk to the RA, by then titled “Wage Peace or …,” called for the convening of a World Parliament of Religions, and the RA passed a resolution urging its members, individually and collectively, to “wage peace,” in part by “join[ing] with all authorized to speak in the name of any of the great religious bodies of mankind in an effort to convene a World Parliament of Religions, for the purpose of formulating some plan and program to bring about the outlawing of war, and [to take] immediate steps to achieve that purpose.” But it is the arguments that Kaplan put forth in his speech to justify the involvement of religions in the discussion of significant political questions—ideas that he reiterated during the floor discussion of Rabbi Harold Schulweis’s convention talk, “The Bias Against Man” (see below), and in the conversation surrounding the Birmingham resolution—that Gendler has in mind in his letter of thanks to Kaplan.

    Kaplan’s RA convention address opens with the assertion that, despite the expansion of Jewish and Christian religious institutions in the 1950s, American religions are irrelevant to the “modern world of affairs.” Accordingly, religion’s “present so-called upsurge amounts to no more than giving it the character and function of background music.” For “religion to be taken seriously” in our nuclear age, it must make a clear contribution to human survival by “stop[ping] [to] mouth[] the fine platitudes about the love of God and of man and demonstrate by deeds that it is passionately concerned that an end be put to all war. It must wage peace, agitate for it, organize for it, and tell those in control of the affairs of the world to establish peace that is permanent and universal.” In Kaplan’s view, the religions of the world have a particular responsibility to do so because they, alongside politics and philosophy, have sanctioned and established war as acceptable human behavior. “Politics has sanctioned war in the name of national sovereignty, philosophy in the name of nature, and religion in the name of God.” Kaplan was pleased with his convention session, noting in his diary that “even the discussion from the floor was to the point.”

    The programming the next morning began with a session focused on Schulweis’s paper, “The Bias Against Man,” in which Schulweis called upon the RA to support the work of the Institute for Righteous Acts (now The Jewish Foundation for Righteous Acts), which he had just established. This Institute would both celebrate the actions of non-Jews in Europe who rescued Jews during the Holocaust and probe the motivations behind their deeds. The work of the Institute was essential, in Schulweis’s view, because the current focus on perpetrators risked “destroying hope” in humanity’s “capacity for decency.” In the paper that followed, Dr. Perry London, who was engaged by the Institute to study the motivations of Holocaust rescuers, echoed Schulweis’s dissatisfaction with the state of the behavioral sciences, adding that “we seem to understand why Southern Whites oppress and segregate the Negroes there, but we never seek to understand as well, or even ask, why Freedom Riders ride.”

    Kaplan’s words in the floor discussion of the two papers shed additional light on his view of the contribution that religion can make to human betterment. For Kaplan, humans—like everything in nature—exist individually but also interact with their environment. Humans, in his view, have acted more egotistically than altruistically only because our social environment has elicited the former more than the latter. “[T]he more we learn to interact, the more we learn to cooperate with those who do not agree with us, the more likely is it that the altruistic, and what we speak of as the spiritual and divine element in us, is liable to come to the surface.” Religions can help move humanity in this direction by encouraging us “to reorganize society into a united nations of the world, a world parliament of religions realizing that we are all one. Not only Kol Yisrael haverim zeh lazeh [sic], but, Kol b’nai adam haverim zeh lazeh.”

    During the same floor discussion, Rabbi Bernard Mandelbaum, Provost of the Jewish Theological Seminary at the time, lauded London’s interest in probing the actions of Civil Rights activists (“Maybe the first thing we ought to do is find out why Everett Gendler and [Rabbi] Lloyd Tennenbaum did go to Albany, Georgia, and why the rest of us did nothing”). He also wondered how it was possible for the gathered rabbis to reiterate time and time again the need not to be silent in response to evil, while “we have been meeting for three days, after seeing the newspaper pictures of Birmingham on Sunday, and have remained silent”?

    When the session ended, a number of rabbis asked Gendler to call the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) to see if the SCLC wanted Conservative rabbis to come to Birmingham. Gendler spoke with MLK’s brother and heard that MLK believed that a delegation of rabbis to the city was both “urgent—and of great importance”. While individual rabbis would decide whether to accompany Gendler to Birmingham, a resolution was drafted to express the RA’s support of their mission:

    Resolved, that The Rabbinical Assembly, in convention assembled, enthusiastically endorse the action of members of The Rabbinical Assembly who volunteer to go to Birmingham to speak and act on behalf of human rights and dignity.

    Both Rabbi Jules Harlow’s and Rabbi Richard Rubenstein’s written accounts of what transpired associate the decision of the 19 rabbis to go to Birmingham with Mandelbaum’s challenge in the Schulweis session. This connection is also made in the New York Times article (May 8, 1963) on the rabbinic delegation. It is, therefore, difficult clearly to link Kaplan’s keynote address and subsequent floor interventions with the decision taken by the 19 rabbis. No such difficulty exists, however, when it comes to tracing Kaplan’s decisive influence on the final wording of the Birmingham resolution.

    Kaplan was the first to speak on the resolution. Each individual, he said, carries a personal responsibility to proliferate justice in the world. But to further justice effectively, individuals must motivate the collective bodies to which they belong to join the struggle for righteousness in cooperation with other groups. This is because only collective action can turn the tide and because—as he had argued previously—individuals develop their sense of responsibility for others by working in community with them. Kaplan continued:

    We are confronted here with a question of whether we, as a body, should send some of us who are in a position to go to encourage those who are fighting the obstructionists. Should they go as individuals, or as representatives of our organization, The Rabbinical Assembly? …

    There is no doubt in my mind that it is our moral duty not to evade questions that have to do with moral issues, confining ourselves merely to questions of ritual matters. It is high time that The Rabbinical Assembly come to be known by the world at large, as well as by our own Jewish people, as a body that is vitally interested in moral issues, with not only something to say but something to do.

    A number of rabbis spoke in favor of Kaplan’s view, including Gendler, who said: “Dr. Kaplan’s point is very relevant now. We happen to be in convention assembled. It is one of the few opportunities when we can speak collectively. If we are to go as random individuals, then, it seems to me, the real point is lost.” In response, Rabbi Theodore Friedman, the President of the RA, amended the resolution to read as follows:

    Resolved, that The Rabbinical Assembly, in convention assembled, enthusiastically endorse the action of the members of The Rabbinical Assembly who in its name [emphasis added] volunteer to go to Birmingham to speak on behalf of human rights and dignity.

    The resolution was passed, and the rabbinic delegation left for Birmingham that night.

    Mordecai Kaplan’s seminal ideas—for example, his definition of God as the Process that makes for Salvation, his assertion that Judaism is the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people—have garnered so much attention that his contributions to social justice thought have gone almost unnoticed. Yet Kaplan argued consistently—as he does here—that the main goal of Judaism, and religion in general, must be to improve human individual and collective behavior. And, as here, concrete suggestions for how the Jewish community can contribute to that goal abound in all of his books, from Judaism as a Civilization (1934) to The Religion of Ethical Nationhood (1970). Kaplan’s call for humanity to act responsibly is rooted in a theology that sees moral behavior not only as “good choice” but as a reflection of the very essence of the cosmos in which all things must act both individually and cooperatively to survive. Kaplan’s assumption that all beings have an inborn desire to cooperate fuels his faith in humanity’s ability to turn “swords into ploughshares.” This is an inspiring vision of religion and of human possibility.

    One can, as Louis Finkelstein does, dismiss Kaplan’s policy ideas as utopian and not thought through to the end. But in studying these texts, I was more taken by the level of Kaplan’s personal engagement with global issues, by his certainty that Judaism can have an impact on the world’s greatest challenges, by his need to personally respond to these challenges, and by his persistence in making his case. With Kaplan, I believe that there is a place for bold visions in the march to a better world. Without them, we might not begin the journey. And, as our episode shows, such visions, when articulated at the right moment, can indeed motivate people to go beyond what they were originally prepared to do. The pride of place accorded to this rabbinic delegation in American Jewish history reminds us that we do feel good when we transcend ourselves. Kaplan does not seem off base, therefore, when he argues that altruistic behavior becomes more likely when supported by communities.

    Kaplan wrote in his diary that he had hoped that a report of his plea for a World Parliament of Religions, with the stated aim of “waging peace,” would appear in the next day’s New York Times, because a Times reporter, Irving Spiegel, attended Kaplan’s session. Kaplan thought that Finkelstein played a role in keeping the story out of the newspaper because Kaplan had, in the talk, “expressed approval of the recent encyclical by Pope John in which he recommended an end to absolute national sovereignty.” Kaplan recognized, however, that his speech simply might have been upstaged by the convention’s actions on Birmingham. Kaplan was proud of his role in getting the Birmingham resolution reworded: “After I had my say no one questioned the advisability of the RA’s sending a delegation in its name.” And Kaplan undertook to pursue new venues to publicize the idea of a World Parliament of Religions.

    Eric Caplan can be reached at eric@kaplancenter.org.

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    Daniel Cedarbaum

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  • Reflections on A Night of Beginnings

    From Rabbi Morris Allen: 

     In a Haggadah text filled with awe and wonder, perhaps the most significant comment Marcia Falk adds to the traditional Haggadah is this:By far the most important symbol at the table is the community of participants.  “Whether two people or thirty are in attendance, tonight we represent am yisra’el,  the people of Israel”.  By placing the participants directly in with the other symbolic representations of the Seder, Falk underscores the centrality of Pesach as THE master narrative of the Jewish people.  It is  through this understanding that Falk reminds us of our particular heritage and responsibility, even as she celebrates aspects of universal concern and focus.

    As our guests opened up this new Haggadah, one comment immediately stood out at our table.  In reflecting on the color coding of the pages, a guest suggested that in doing so “she softened the telling immediately and enabled doubters to see a way in.”  On her apricot pages are her brachot, blessings. Here we are to see a reimagined Divine which is the greater whole of which we are an inseparable part. Her metaphors are a wellspring of life, removing imagery of a Sovereign or a Lord.   It is on those light blueberry/purple pages though—what she labels kavanot—that her poetic lens and insight might be most evident. For our guests, all of whom were obviously new to this Haggadah, two kavanot stood out and engendered the greatest discussion.  The first was the pairing of the words of Emma Lazurus with those of Martin Luther King. Given the state of our country and of the world, the timelessness of those words paired together touched people in a unique fashion.  The other was her kavanah immediately after Dayeinu.  After a hearty singing of “it would have been enough”, we were introduced to the fact that “we begin as nothing, and we end as nothing. And in between——everything and nothing…joy and sorrow, beauty and decay…to give birth to and to let go.”  Dayeinu and the gratitude it wants to create was understood—-perhaps for the first time—by everyone assembled. 

    As might be expected in any new Haggadah that seeks to engage in transformation and adaptation, pieces that might be familiar to Seder participants will be missing.  In a world where anti-Jewish sentiment is still evident and increasing, her decision to remove both Vehee Sheamdah and Shfoch Hamatcha, didn’t sit well with some of  our guests— not because each understood the animus directed towards us in the same way, but that, as a result,  a central message was missing concerning  what it has meant to be a minority inside this world.  The other major absence was the famous dictum of Rabban Gamliel—“that whoever does not reflect on  the significance of  Pesach, Matzah and Maror, has not fulfilled their obligation”.  While Falk is clear about her desire to stay away from  traditional rabbinic commentary in her Haggadah-and thus would have been hard pressed to include this passage,its absence was noted.  However,  I found it quite easy to include each of these three  short traditional pieces in her beautiful Maggid section..  I believe this Haggadah would have been well served hadFalk  included this element  in her bold commentary during the Maggid section. Perhaps it was part of her revealing and concealing—but its absence was jarring.    For those who are accustomed to finishing the Seder after the meal, her rendering was filled with song in a way that the opening sections were not.  Since she had already decided to re-order some aspects of the traditional text, perhaps an opportunity to  add songs or sing a piece of the traditional Hallel before dinner might have been advised. 

     All  concerns aside, Marcia Falk has contributed a great deal to the understanding of Pesach and the role it has to play in the life of every serious Jew.  The exquisite poetry and the beautiful drawings force a way for even the most obdurate participant  into an evening that is central to our people’s unfolding narrative.  I felt blessed to have been able to share this text with our table guests and will look forward to using it again as one of the Haggadot which provides content  for our Seder guests.  

    Rabbi Morris Allen is Rabbi Emeritus of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, MN and recently retired as the Senior Community Liaison for Rep. Angie Craig(MN-02) 

    From Ben Schein

    We often talk about the Seder as being about “the order”.  However, this year I have found myself thinking about ordering as a verb,  as in we are going to order or really “re-order” the Seder itself.  That is the core of what I found myself doing and appreciating in using Marcia Falk’s new Night of Beginnings: A Passover Haggadah. Falk’s “reorderings” stimulated my thinking. I really appreciated how she has created new sections of the Haggadah while still using the traditional order as its core.  In the maggid, telling,  she helps us understand that we introduce the story, then tell it in a way that preserves the integrity of the Biblical story itself.  Throughout the Haggadah her color coding  helps us be aware of the distinctiveness of each part of this liturgical coat of many colors. 

    Falk has also “re-ordered” by re-introducing old-new characters into the maggid itself.  Moses and Miriam are no longer missing from the story. They are an integral part of the new seder of a Biblical maggid that was displaced over time.  This is an act of creative recovery.

    Lastly, we ”re-order” even how we bless.  There is a very thoughtful new approach to blessings however that “re-orders” in the very radical sense of beginning the blessing formula with the human urge to bless rather than God being deserving of blessing.  This was more than I could meaningfully assimilate. Lastly, we ”re-order” even how we bless.   This was more than I could meaningfully assimilate.   At some point, it felt disconnected from my understanding of the traditional order that works for me. It also felt like a generational disruption of l’dvor vador and I ended up creating a supplement with the traditional blessings.  But that was my own choice in how to “re-order”.  I hope Falk would  appreciate that as part of the freedom we reappropriate each Pesach. 

    Ben Schein serves as Vice President of Data Curiosity at software company Domo, Inc. and lives in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota with his wife Robyn and children Ilan, Talia and Aryeh.

    Rabbi Margie Jacobs:

    Marcia Falk’s Night of Beginnings offers a wonderful balm to the overwhelm, anxiety, and harshness- the kotzer ruach and avodah kashah– of these times. This is a Haggadah that speaks intimately and gently to our hearts.  The subtle flower sketches that permeate the pages gently invite us to unfold as a flower does. The spacious, soft visual beauty of this Haggadah calls to the places in us that words can’t reach, captured in Falk’s  interpretation of the “The Child Who Cannot Ask.” Her generous, positive reconstruction of all four children was a favorite moment of the Seder for my family.  Even in words, Falk manages to touch that which is hidden within us. The poetry of the expanded Song of Songs section and Marcia’s own poetic liturgy elicit the love and yearning within us that might catalyze our own liberation.The simplicity and spaciousness of the Haggadah left me wanting more words in just a few places, including a clear reconstruction of the four divine actions traditionally associated with each cup of wine.

    The most profound absence noted at our Seder table was that of the traditional blessing construction. I am so grateful for the new ways of blessing that Marcia Falk has brought us, both here and in her groundbreaking Book of Blessings. Yet while most of my extended family found the poetic liturgy inviting and meaningful, I was surprised that even some of the Renewal-leaning, Berkeley guests missed the option of the traditional blessings. It might have been useful to bold or enlarge the “N’varech/ N’kadesh” language that was included on each blessing page, and provide a little more framing of the choice not to include the traditional construction in the introduction to the Haggadah.

    Like Falk’s Book of Blessings, Night of Beginnings is a beautiful, creative, and much-needed resource.  I imagine that over the years, our family will fill some of the empty spaces with ancient and new voices- in pencil so that they can evolve over time.

    Rabbi Margie Jacobs is a Reconstructionist Rabbi, Jewish Studio Process Facilitator, and Website Designer for the Kaplan Center.

    Rabbi Jeffrey Schein: 

    All the virtues of the Haggadah noted in reviews in popular journals–the beautiful prose-poetry, the delicate aesthetic illustrations, the invitation to move the Pesach journey along the axes of outward to inward, concealed to revealed–were at play during our Seder.  Perhaps the supreme compliment came from a non-Jewish guest. Though explicitly non-religious, he wanted to bring a copy back to his fiancee in Singapore because of the spiritual values permeating the volume.

    I facilitated the Maggid portion of the Seder.  I was eager to help participants explore the deep feminism of Marcia Falk’s orientation and also to locate the volume in the tradition of new, contemporary Haggadot that dates back to the publication of The New Haggadah by Behrman House in 1941.  Here is how I hoped the two intentions would come to fruition.  

    I began by suggesting that the 1941 Haggadah sought to open up the meaning of freedom and slavery.  The refrain of that Haggadah is a litany of moments to see the theme of meavdut  lecherut ,from slavery to freedom ,in the contemporary situation of the Jewish people in 1941.  Hence slavery is encountered when we are enslaved to our emotions, when poverty and inequality are perpetuated for some, and when one slavishly sacrifices ones Jewish pride and connection to the altar of belonging to America.  This was a bold “problematizing” of the notions of freedom and slavery that we take for granted. 

    Tellingly and unsurprisingly given its 1941 context there was no mention here of the slavery/ mitzrayim ,narrowness, of constricted gender roles and subjugation of females to males.  But today we understand this.  I found the most meaningful new addition to the Haggadah to be Marcia Falk’s expansion of  avadim hayinu/atah be nai chorim ,once we were slaves now we are free, to include shifachot hayinu ata benot chorin ,once we were handmaidens now we are free women.

    With more time we undoubtedly would have compared the status of Hebrew handmaids to the portraits we now encounter in works like The Help and The Handmaid’s Tale.   Naming this form of gender based marginalization and reconstructing a song based on it, allowed me to see Marcia Falk in the line of creative Pesach liturgists begun with The New Haggadah (1941) and continuing today.  At its best and boldest such reimaginings not only add new aesthetic dimensions but help us reconstruct our understanding of Judaism based on new ethical and spiritual considerations.   
    But I have no desire to downplay the role of ritual at all. We  concluded the section by singing the shifachot hayinu to the same traditional melody as  avadim hayinu!

    Rabbi Jeffrey Schein is the Executive Director and Senior Educator for the Kaplan Center

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    Margie Jacobs

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  • The Issue of Free Speech: A Kaplan Sermon From 1920

    KAPLAN in the period after the end of World War I , was concerned about the issue of free speech. Right now both in America and in Israel the matter of free speech is very much on people’s minds. With Israel at war should we allow ourselves the space to criticize the government in its policies and its actions? What does patriotism dictate?

    In a sermon from that era, never published, which he entitled “ The Right to Criticize One’s People” Kaplan points to narratives from the Torah, particularly with regard to Jacob and the sins of his early life. 

    This sermon was delivered at the Jewish Center, he told the congregation: “ The Bible shows not the least tendency to palliate any of the wrongs committed by Israel’s heroes. Whether it is patriarch or prophet, priest or king, that deserved denunciation, the Bible shows itself entirely unsparing. Israel as a whole fares still worse. Her sins are exposed with pitiless frankness.”

     And yet the issue of criticism is different in war time. Kaplan goes on to state, “ ..we should say that during the time that we were engaged in war, there was justification for limiting the right to criticize government policies and national institutions. But now we are at peace with the outside world, why continue the suppression of free discussion? The right to free speech …should not defined  as an abstract right to self-expression but as an indispensable need to those who are in power to prevent them from abusing that power..”

    What is the lesson here? Israel’s leaders must take heed and be careful. They have a right and an obligation to strengthen Israel’s security and to ensure a safe homeland but at the same time they must keep in mind the Jewish tradition of justice and the sacredness of every life including the lives of our enemies. When the war ends they will be subject to judgment. 

    Bibi may have personal reasons for having the war continue. 

    The statement by Golda Meir keeps rolling around in my head “ How do you make peace with someone who comes to kill you” and yet we must find a way to make peace.  It is well to remember that Yitzhak Rabin made peace with Yasir Arafat.  You make peace with your enemies not with your friends. Rabin stated eloquently, “Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life.” But perhaps the time has not  yet arrived. — Yitzhak Rabin, 1994 Nobel Peace Prize lecture[66]

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    Margie Jacobs

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    , ,

  • To Mask or Not to Mask: That is the Question

    The Masked Rider

    I think we are forever searching for  the sweet spot where Jewish texts illuminate our life as American Jews, particularly today.   I understand that identifying where and how our two civilizations meet to be a Kaplanian imperative.

    So I now return to the “Text Me” project previously described and search out the meeting of my passion as a biker, my love of the old television and radio show The Lone Ranger, and my concern about mask-wearing in this time of pandemic.  Jewish texts provide an integrative thread among these aspects of my life.  I am a devotee of Rabbi Ben Bag Bag’s famous understanding of Jewish texts:  turn them over and over and you will always find something of value.

    As I notice the changes in the way people are wearing or not wearing masks, I wonder what might account for the waning motivation to be “masked” in public.  Perhaps we might conjecture:  it’s no longer necessary because COVID-19 is plateauing.  Other aspects of social distancing (think six feet) might be more effective.  I can’t escape the disease so why inconvenience myself?  It is based on inexact science.  If others have stopped doing it what can I contribute?  It’s just not comfortable anymore.  I’m just plain tired of wearing it. The rationales are endless.

    In fact we all make adjustments and play with the realities we are given.  I love bike riding and find the mask does strip away some of the joy of soft air brushing against my face and sweet scents breezing by my exposed nose.  So I have learned to move the mask under my chin when I clearly am riding alone and return it to its original position as I see a bike approaching or as I pass or approach a pedestrian.  That’s imperfect.  It can’t account, for instance, for the person passing close to me.  It can’t measure the life cycle of germs that came from the sneeze of five minutes before.  Risks are manageable but not susceptible by their very nature to elimination.  (Or, as my wife reminds me, I could stop riding my bike, but that would risk my sanity.)

    When perplexed (or in a state of “bafflement,” as the author Parker Palmer so eloquently expressed in On the Brink of Everything [2018]), I turn to Jewish texts that provide insight and perspective.  I think of three texts in particular in this context.

     Emmanuel Levinas:  I Can’t Bear the Separation from the Divine

     To be masked, Levinas might argue, is to lose touch with the ultimate mystery of God/Godliness in the world that is revealed by the human face.  It is in the encounter with the human face in all its irreducible otherness that I discover my own ethical obligations, a bridging of the phenomenal and valuational worlds Levinas calls “optical ethics”.  To be so soul sick, so bereft of my spiritual compass is unacceptable.  It reminds me of the lament of the liturgist in the poem Yedid Nefesh that to be so distant from the divine is almost insufferable.

    That certainly is the most high-minded rationale I can imagine.

    The Masking and Unmasking of Moses (Exodus, Chapter 34)

     Perhaps we have lost ourselves in a series of liberal assumptions about what constitutes holiness and awe.  Moses dons a mask (a maseveh)  when he is on Mount Sinai every time he is not engaged in absolutely essential communication, defined in the Torah as communicating directly with God or conveying the revelation to the Israelites.

    At any other time the absolute terror of the Divine requires distance or in this instance Moses wearing a mask.  When scholars like Max Kadushin talk about the “emphatic trend” of the Rabbinic mind in downplaying the fierce judgment of God with a more balanced rachamim (mercy) understanding of holiness, we applaud.  But is something lost in the process?  The  anthropologist Rudolf Otto wrote about this in his late 19th century description of the “holy”.  In visual media, Steven Spielberg captures it when the Ark goes crazy with overflowing, dangerous otherness, endangering all who are near and unprotected in Raiders of the Lost Ark. My wife, Dr. Deborah Schein, speaks of this necessary element of “fearful” reverence as providing a cornerstone for the child’s sense of belonging to a community larger than him/herself.

    It seems to me that in our first brushes with COVID-19, this elemental fear served an important purpose.  It thrust upon us caution about what we don’t yet (or perhaps never will understand).  But of course moments of revelation give way to the ordinary.

    The Ahavah Rabbah Prayer: Moving from Divine Love to Human Teaching and from Learning to Practices and Routines

    Some scholars of Jewish liturgy (Lawrence Hoffman, for example) find in the flow of the Shema and its blessings the essential Jewish ideas of creation, revelation, and redemption.

    The Ahavah Rabbah prayer, coming immediately before the Shema, has its own triple transformation.  The prayer begins by likening the expansive love God has for God’s creatures to the love of a parent for a child.  Far from abstract, this love is embodied in the traditions of the Jewish People.  It empowers a process of li’lmod u’le’lamed, of learning and teaching, that begins with listening (li’shmo-ah), attentiveness to detail (le’haskil), and understanding (le’havin) that becomes Torah in its broadest sense.

    Yet, this pattern of Jewish learning is hardly self-contained.  It practically begs for transformation into a pattern of Jewish and ethical living.  The last three verbs lishmore, la’asot , u’l’kayem guide this process of transformation.  We are called upon to treasure (li’shmor), do (la’asot) and make tangible, real, and enduring (l’kayem) all of the words of Torah so as to create a sustainable pattern of Jewish living.

    As the pandemic unfolded, we had the motivation of la’asot, to do, simply to follow the directive of mask wearing, few if any questions asked.  We further honored it with the patina of authority, a bit of li’shmor, guardianship and endorsement of social or governmental expectations or directives.  But as so often happens in a society where obligations are often voluntary (I know this is paradoxical), we haven’t taken the final step of making this u’l’kayem, an ongoing practice.

    Of course that is the great danger, isn’t it?  That we will give up on what is necessary and life-affirming in the long run through sheer emotional and spiritual exhaustion?

    What do you think?

    Jeffrey Schein can be reached at jeffrey@kaplancenter.org.

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    Jeffrey Schein

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  • Kaplanian Educational Resource Bank

    Welcome to our growing collection!  Suggest additional resources here!

    NameType of ResourceTarget AudienceSubjectAuthor / Editor Publication Info
    Lifelong Spirituality and God ConnectionArticle / Essay, Curriculum, Professional DevelopmentEarly Childhood, Elementary, Tween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, God, Kaplanian EducationJeffrey ScheinThe Kaplan Center
    TEL: Tikkun Olam CurriculumCurriculumTween / TeenBeliefs & Practices, Identity, Peoplehood, ValuesErin Hirsh, Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer, Elana FriedmanReconstructing Judaism
    God’s PaintbrushPrimary SourceEarly Childhood, ElementaryBeliefs & Practices, God, IdentitySandy Eisenberg SassoJewish Lights
    God’s Paintbrush Celebration KitProfessional DevelopmentEarly Childhood, ElementaryBeliefs & Practices, God, IdentitySandy Eisenberg Sasso, Donald SchmidtJewish Lights
    God’s Paintbrush Teacher’s GuideProfessional DevelopmentEarly Childhood, ElementaryBeliefs & Practices, God, IdentityJeffrey Schein, Joseph M. BlairJewish Light
    The Thirteen WantsPrimary Source, Text StudyTween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, Identity, Kaplan, PeoplehoodMordecai KaplanSociety for the Advancement of Judaism 1926
    Translating Texts to ChildrenArticle / Essay, Professional DevelopmentAdultGod, Kaplanian Education, TorahBruce BlackThe Reconstructionist Spring 2002
    Where Meaning Happens: The Task of Teaching TorahArticle / EssayAdultKaplanian Education, TorahToba SpitzerThe Reconstructionist Spring 2002
    Hermeneutics and Jewish EducationArticle / EssayAdultKaplanian Education, TorahCaryn BroitmanThe Reconstructionist Spring 2002
    Kol Haneshamah: Mahzor L’Yamim Nora’im Study GuideCurriculumAdultBeliefs & Practices, HolidaySherry Linkon, Steve SegarReconstructing Judaism
    Kaplan’s Legacy for Jewish Education Article / EssayAdultKaplan, Kaplanian EducationJeffrey ScheinThe Reconstructionist Fall 1995
    Connecting Prayer and SpiritualityCurriculum, Professional DevelopmentEarly Childhood, Elementary, Tween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, God, Kaplanian EducationJeffrey Schein, Joseph M. Blair, Leah MundellReconstructing Judaism
    Text, Teacher and Student: Enhancing Spiritual DevelopmentProfessional DevelopmentElementary, Tween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, Kaplanian EducationJeffrey ScheinThe Reconstructionist Spring 2002
    Kaplan’s Ideas on Jewish Education with Questions on Specific TextsPrimary Source, Professional DevelopmentTween / Teen, AdultKaplan, Kaplanian EducationMordecai KaplanJudaism as a Civilization 1934
    Kaplan’s Ideas on Jewish Education with Overarching QuestionsPrimary Source, Professional DevelopmentTween / Teen, AdultKaplan, Kaplanian EducationMordecai KaplanJudaism as a Civilization 1934
    Kaplan’s Ideas on Jewish Education in His Own WordsPrimary Source, Professional DevelopmentTween / Teen, AdultKaplan, Kaplanian EducationMordecai KaplanJudaism as a Civilization 1934
    Judy Led the WayPrimary SourceEarly Childhood, ElementaryBeliefs & Practices, Feminism, Identity, Kaplan, Kaplanian EducationSandy Eisenberg SassoBehrman House
    Walking with GodCurriculumAdultGod, TorahBradley Shavit Artson, Deborah SilverZiegler School of Rabbinic Studies of American Jewish University
    Ten Eytzot for Seven Berachot: Background to Teaching The AmidahProfessional DevelopmentAdultBeliefs & Practices, Kaplanian EducationJoseph M. BlairReconstructing Judaism
    God Talk for ChildrenCurriculumEarly Childhood, ElementaryGod, Beliefs & PracticesBarbara StaubReconstructing Judaism
    Belonging, Behaving, Believing: Exploring Reconstructionist ProcessArticle / EssayAdultBeliefs & Practices, Identity, Kaplanian Education, PeoplehoodPatti HaskellThe Reconstructionist 2007
    My Role in Shaping Jewish Civilization Activity 1CurriculumTween / Teen, AdultIdentity, Kaplanian Education, PeoplehoodSteve IsraelCenter for Jewish Peoplehood Education and UJA Federation of NY
    Who Are the Jews?ActivityTween / Teen, AdultIdentity, Kaplanian Education, PeoplehoodSteve IsraelCenter for Jewish Peoplehood Education and UJA Federation of NY
    Jewish Books & PeoplehoodActivityTween / Teen, AdultIdentity, Kaplanian Education, PeoplehoodSteve IsraelCenter for Jewish Peoplehood Education and UJA Federation of NY
    Jewish Food and PeoplehoodActivityTween / Teen, AdultIdentity, Kaplanian Education, PeoplehoodSteve IsraelCenter for Jewish Peoplehood Education and UJA Federation of NY
    Hebrew and Jewish PeoplehoodActivityTween / Teen, AdultIdentity, Israel, Kaplanian Education, PeoplehoodSteve IsraelCenter for Jewish Peoplehood Education and UJA Federation of NY
    God and Jewish CivilizationActivityTween / Teen, AdultGod, Identity, Kaplanian Education, PeoplehoodSteve IsraelCenter for Jewish Peoplehood Education and UJA Federation of NY
    Communal Institutions and Peoplehood ActivityTween / Teen, AdultIdentity, Kaplanian Education, PeoplehoodSteve IsraelCenter for Jewish Peoplehood Education and UJA Federation of NY
    The Theological Foundations of God’s PaintbrushArticle / EssayAdultGodJeffrey ScheinReconstructing Judaism
    A Child’s Biography of Mordecai Kaplan Primary SourceTween / TeenKaplan, Kaplanian EducationLewis EronReconstructing Judaism
    Members of the TribeCurriculumTween / TeenPeoplehoodJewish Education Center of ClevelandJewish Education Center of Cleveland
    Kol HaNoar (with Transliteration)Primary SourceEarly Childhood, ElementaryBeliefs & Practices, GodSandy Eisenberg Sasso, Jeffrey ScheinReconstructing Judaism
    Kol HaNoar (without Transliteration)Primary SourceEarly Childhood, ElementaryBeliefs & Practices, GodSandy Eisenberg Sasso, Jeffrey ScheinReconstructing Judaism
    How Can Reconstructionists PrayArticle / EssayAdultBeliefs & PracticesJacob StaubReconstructing Judaism
    Exploring Judaism Adult Education Study GuideArticle / EssayAdultBeliefs & Practices, God, Identity, Kaplan, Kaplanian Education, PeoplehoodMargie Jacobs, Nina MandelReconstructing Judaism
    Evoking the Indefinable Spirituality in the ClassroomProfessional DevelopmentEarly Childhood, Elementary, Tween / Teen

    		Beliefs & Practices, God, IdentityBarbara CarrReconstructing Judaism
    Frequently Asked Questions of Reconstructionist EducatorsProfessional DevelopmentAdultBeliefs & Practices, God, Identity, Israel, Kaplanian Education, Torah, ValuesMoti Rieber, Shai Gluskin, Jeffrey ScheinReconstructing Judaism
    Teaching Reconstructionist Concepts in Ways that are Developmentally AppropriateProfessional DevelopmentAdultBeliefs & Practices, God, Identity, Israel, Kaplanian Education, Torah, ValuesMoti Rieber, Shai Gluskin, Jeffrey ScheinReconstructing Judaism
    The Blurring of Human and Divine in The Digital AgeArticle / EssayAdultBeliefs & Practices, GodJeffrey ScheinText Me Project
    You Have A Real Kaplanian Approach When . . .Professional DevelopmentAdultBeliefs & Practices, Kaplanian EducationJeffrey ScheinReconstructing Judaism
    Jewish Identity BuffetActivityTween / TeenBeliefs & Practices, Identity, Peoplehood, ValuesBethamie HorowitzJewish Education Center of Cleveland
    In God’s NamePrimary SourceEarly Childhood, ElementaryBeliefs & Practices, God, Identity, ValuesSandy Eisenberg SassoJewish Lights
    Values Trail MixActivityElementary, Tween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, Identity, ValuesCamp HavayaReconstructing Judaism
    Aaron and the Wrath of GodProfessional DevelopmentAdultBeliefs & Practices, God, Kaplanian EducationTuvya Ben Shlomo, Jeffrey ScheinPhiladelphia Jewish Exponent July 31 1984
    The Values of Spiritual PeoplehoodArticle / EssayAdultKaplan, Kaplanian Education, Peoplehood, ValuesJeffrey Eisenstat, Jeffrey ScheinReconstructing Judaism
    Amphibious JewArticle / EssayAdultIdentity, Kaplan, Peoplehood, ValuesJeffrey ScheinThe Kaplan Center
    Teen Exploration of God BeliefsCurriculumTween / TeenBeliefs & Practices, GodJeffrey ScheinReconstructing Judaism
    The Burning Question: A PlayPrimary SourceElementary, Tween / TeenBeliefs & Practices, God, TorahErin HirshReconstructing Judaism
    Curriculum Guide for In God’s NameCurriculumEarly Childhood, ElementaryBeliefs & Practices, God, IdentityLeah MundellReconstructing Judaism
    In God’s Name Matching GamePrimary SourceEarly Childhood, ElementaryGod, IdentityErin HirshReconstructing Judaism
    The Educational Philosophies of Mordecai Kaplan and Michael RosenakArticle / EssayAdultKaplan, Kaplanian EducationJeffrey Schein, Eric CaplanThe Kaplan Center
    Chosenness Test StudyPrimary Source, Text StudyAdultBeliefs & Practices, KaplanJames GreeneJames Greene
    Theology Through the CivilizationsPrimary Source, Text StudyAdultBeliefs & Practices, History, KaplanJames GreeneJames Greene
    Jewish Peoplehood: What Does it Mean?Article / EssayAdultBeliefs & Practices, Identity, Kaplan, Peoplehood, Values VariousContact Magazine Spring 2008 Volume 10 Number 3
    Kaplan the Philosopher and Kaplan the Spiritual PragmatistPrimary Source, Text StudyAdultBeliefs & Practices, God, Kaplan, ValuesNancy Fuchs-KreimerNancy Fuchs-Kreimer
    Kaplan on JusticKaplan on JusticeePrimary Source, Text StudyAdultBeliefs & Practices, Kaplan, ValuesDeborah WaxmanDeborah Waxman
    A Mini-Course: Reconstructionist Judaism on One FootArticle / EssayAdultBeliefs & Practices, Identity, Kaplan, ValuesLes BronsteinBet Am Shalom
    Jewish People: Mordecai KaplanActivity, Curriculum, Primary SourceElementary, Tween / TeenBeliefs & Practices, History, Identity, KaplanRon IsaacsTorah Aura
    A Year with Mordecai Kaplan: Wisdom on the Weekly Torah PortionPrimary Source, Text StudyTween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, Kaplan, Torah, Values Steven Carr ReubenJewish Publication Society
    Judaism as a Civilization
    Toward a Reconstruction of American-Jewish Life    		Primary SourceTween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, God, History, Identity, Israel, Kaplan, Kaplanian Education, Peoplehood, Torah, ValuesMordecai KaplanJewish Publication Society
    Communings of the Spirit, Volume 1: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan, 1913-1934Primary SourceAdultBeliefs & Practices, God, History, Identity, Israel, Kaplan, Kaplanian Education, Peoplehood, Torah, ValuesMel ScultWayne State University
    Communings of the Spirit, Volume II: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan, 1934-1942Primary SourceAdultBeliefs & Practices, God, History, Identity, Israel, Kaplan, Kaplanian Education, Peoplehood, Torah, ValuesMel ScultWayne State University
    Communings of the Spirit, Volume III: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan, 1942-1951Primary SourceAdultBeliefs & Practices, God, History, Identity, Israel, Kaplan, Kaplanian Education, Peoplehood, Torah, ValuesMel ScultWayne State University
    Who Can RememberActivity, Primary SourceElementaryBeliefs & Practices, History, Holiday, Identity, Peoplehood, Torah, ValuesSandy BrusinReconstructing Judaism
    How a Chelm Synagogue Became Reconstructionist or Explaining Reconstructionism-Chelm StyleArticle / Essay, Text StudyTween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, History, Kaplanian Education, Peoplehood, ValuesDaniel BrennerDaniel Brenner
    Passover Parodies: Short Plays for the SederActivity, Primary SourceTween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, Holiday, Identity, PeoplehoodShoshana HantmanSidney Books
    Exploring the Jewish Value of Asking Questions with Judy Led the WayActivity, CurriculumEarly Childhood, Elementary, Tween / TeenBeliefs & Practices, Feminism, Identity, Kaplan, Kaplanian Education, Peoplehood, Values Sandy Eisenberg SassoThe Kaplan Center
    A Guide to Incorporating Judy Led the Way in Jewish Educational ProgramsActivity, CurriculumEarly Childhood, Elementary, Tween / TeenBeliefs & Practices, Feminism, History, Holiday, Identity, Kaplan, Kaplanian Education, Peoplehood, Values Jeffrey ScheinThe Kaplan Center
    Reflecting on the meaning of Judaism as a Civilization through the Poetry of Dr. Judith Kaplan EisensteinPrimary Source, Text StudyTween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, Feminism, Identity, Kaplan, Kaplanian Education, Peoplehood, Values Erin HirshThe Kaplan Center
    Complete Packet of Suggestions for Maximizing the Educational Impact of Judy Led the WayActivity, Curriculum, Text StudyEarly Childhood, Elementary, Tween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, Feminism, History, Holiday, Identity, Kaplan, Kaplanian Education, Peoplehood, Torah, Values Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, Jeffrey Schein, Erin HirshThe Kaplan Center
    The History and Context of Kaplan’s Daughter Becoming the First Bat Mitzvah and of the Book Judy Led the WayProfessional DevelopmentTween / Teen, AdultBeliefs & Practices, Feminism, History, Holiday, Identity, Kaplan, Kaplanian Education, Peoplehood, Values Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, Jeffrey ScheinThe Kaplan Center, Behrman House Publishers
    What is a GJGDC and How Can I Help My Students Become One?Activity, Curriculum, Text StudyTween / Teen, AdultBelief & Practices, Identity, Peoplehood, ValuesJeffrey ScheinThe Kaplan Center
    God Cafe A Contemporary Reconstructionist Approach to TheologyArticle / EssayAdultBelief & Practices, God, Identity, Kaplanian EducationSarah Brammer-ShlaySarah Brammer-Shlay
    Primary SourceAdultBelief & Practices, God, Identity, Kaplanian EducationSarah Brammer-ShlaySarah Brammer-Shlay

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    Daniel Cedarbaum

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  • Repair & Remedy

    Primary Contacts:

    Amy Leszman 
    amyl@judaismyourway.org  

    Rabbi Caryn Aviv
    caryn@judaismyourway.org

    www.judaismyourway.org

    The Torah of Inclusion holds fast to Kaplan’s conviction that we have the obligation (or privilege, depending on your perspective) to participate in the evolution of Jewish culture, civilization, and spirituality. The Torah of Inclusion joins two terms: Torah + Inclusion. Torah means both the foundational sacred text of Jewish wisdom, as well as the process by which Jews and loved ones discern insights, meaning, goodness, and connection to what we hold sacred in our lives. 

    Inclusion means expanding who belongs within the tent of Judaism, with particular attention to those who have felt hurt, invisible, excluded, disenfranchised, and on the margins of Jewish life. Inclusion is shorthand for the way we aspire to treat and be with each other, living in the tension and evolution of Jewish and American civilization. 

    We imagine a maximally inclusive Jewish community that embodies a diverse, open, democratic, egalitarian, and just American society of which we want the Judaism Your Way community to be a part. The Torah of Inclusion is a prophetic voice, speaking both to the Judaism Your Way community and beyond to our wider society. The Torah of Inclusion supports policies that promote inclusion and dignity for all, including people who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and differently-abled. 

    The Torah of Inclusion represents our evolving view on Judaism, who is included, and who Judaism is for. Much like Kaplan, we believe that Jewish life must embrace creativity, flexibility, justice, compassion, and imagination for Judaism to evolve. We believe and practice through the Torah of Inclusion that there are many right ways to be Jewish and to connect to Jewish/American cultures.

    In February 2022, Judaism Your Way launched a new project called Repair & Remedy (please see emailed attachment for more information). Repair & Remedy offers transformative learning opportunities for Jews and our allies to explore Jewish and Black texts about the generational, harmful impacts of racism and to investigate our individual and collective responsibility to right those wrongs through teshuvah and action. Repair & Remedy invites participants to imagine how Jews and our allies can deploy Jewish concepts and practices to repair, remedy, and heal the impacts of racial harm.

    Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan believed that Judaism provided ideas, tools, and practices that could improve the human condition. Kaplan also fervently believed that Judaism could contribute towards the creation of a more just and compassionate society and that it was up to us to motivate Jewish individuals and groups to work for justice. Repair & Remedy draws inspiration from and invokes Kaplan’s spirit to create more consciousness, conversation, and action around the need to reimagine racial justice and equity in the United States, and to work towards enacting that vision. 

    As far as we know, there is no other educational effort that pairs Jewish and Black texts together to study harm, repair, and the impact of racism. And, also as far as we know, there are not currently any efforts in the American Jewish community that seek to galvanize Jews to participate in tangible reparations efforts, which is the goal of our next phase of Repair & Remedy through the creation of giving circles. In both ways, we believe Repair & Remedy is Kaplanian in spirit and educationally innovative in character.

    https://www.judaismyourway.org/repair-and-remedy/

    https://www.judaismyourway.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/participant-booklet-electronic.pdf

    If you’re interested in purchasing the curriculum and learning how to facilitate, please contact Rabbi Caryn Aviv at caryn@judaismyourway.org.

    Back to the Innovation Garden

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    Sheridan

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  • “God Cafe”: A Contemporary Reconstructionist Approach To Theology

    by Sarah Brammer-Shlay 

    One of the aspects of Reconstructionist Judaism that drew me into this movement was the way its vision centers on trusting the Jewish people, our people. Mordecai Kaplan stated, “There are dead cultures or civilizations. What renders them alive is an indigenous leadership which actively relates the culture or civilization to the present day interests and problems of the people” (The Future of The American Jew, pg 87). Deeply ingrained in Kaplan’s vision of Judaism is a trust in the evolution of the Jewish people and an acknowledgment that change will occur. In order to be a vibrant community, we must listen to the needs, desires and lived experiences of the Jewish people in our contemporary times. 

    Trusting in the wisdom of our people has been core to my work with The God Cafe Project, an initiative through which I explore God and divinity in various Jewish communities. There is great wisdom in the theology of Jewish thinkers and the ancient Jewish texts that came before us. I return to these texts frequently and draw inspiration from them. And yet, in my work with the God Cafe Project, I have intentionally decided to decenter these texts and instead center the wisdom and experiences which every individual is bringing into the room. One might say this approach echoes Kaplan’s, in the sense that our beautiful texts get a vote but not a veto. I mean to suggest that personal narratives may be a necessary and helpful place to begin a vulnerable and open conversation about the way individuals approach their theological questions, qualms and journeys. As Jewish human beings evolve, their wisdom evolves and in turn Judaism evolves.

    ————

    The God Cafe Project began in 2017 before I had given it that name. The exploratory idea was inspired by my unit taught by Rabbi Jacob Staub on theology in my Reconstructionism 101 class at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Learning about the ways that Kaplan and other Reconstructionist thinkers have thought about God prompted me to reflect on particular moments in my life where divinity – what God was and is- felt very clear and compelling to me. 

    My background is in community organizing, so whenever I am experiencing something new or asking myself a compelling question, my first instinct is to reach out and ask: Has anyone else felt similarly or am I alone? The answer is rarely that we are alone. 

    Most experiences we have in our lives, although specific to our own particular backgrounds, are rarely a completely unique or isolated experience. So, bringing my relational organizing skills with me, I asked a series of interested people to respond to this question: “What is a specific time in your life where you found yourself particularly connecting to or grappling with God and/or divinity?” It turned out people had a lot to say. These conversations, although emotionally moving both for me and the individuals sharing, presented two potential limitations. The first is that it was a high bar to expect someone to be willing to have such a vulnerable conversation with someone they minimally know. The second is that given that our society often avoids these types of conversations, to jump immediately into an isolated reflective conversation might require previous reflection that many individuals have not found the space to have. It takes a lot of emotional work to pick up the phone and share deeply vulnerable moments with someone. At times, we need to hear others’ stories to ignite remembering our own. It is not always easy to reflect on your own experience without listening to others’ first. In a similar way to feminist consciousness raising groups, there is power in the communal experience. The community is core to Judaism and it is core to Reconstructionism. Therefore, after holding these initial individual conversations, I began to experiment with how to have these sorts of honest, vulnerable and seemingly taboo conversations in a group setting.

    The God Cafe Project has evolved into a curriculum which includes a one-time workshop – “God Cafe”- and also a multi-week cohort experience. I have had the privilege of conducting God Cafes across the United States and over Zoom over the past few years. I use creative and diverse pedagogy to facilitate conversations on a topic rarely discussed. I am continuously amazed by individuals’ capacities to open up and share with each other on a topic often left untouched. By rooting the conversation in individual experience, we create a more equal playing field where all voices are heard and seen as vital to the conversation. 

    In the multi-week version of the project, I do include more formal teaching about Judaism’s diverse theological approaches ranging from the Biblical to Contemporary Period. This addition of text demonstrates the variety of ways in which one can think about God and demonstrates that we are steeply aligned with our tradition through our exploration and questioning of how we relate to God. Interestingly even in these sessions where we look at text, what participants often are most excited to hear is about each other’s experiences and each others’ questions pertaining to the subject. The unique value proposition of The God Cafe experience is the ability to hear personally from each other; that is in fact the holy and sacred encounter.

    I begin each God Cafe experience by asking participants to release any expectation they might be holding to be articulate or completely rational. Upon first glance, the move away from rationalism might seem counter to the beliefs of Reconstructionist Judaism. A core part of Kaplan’s vision for the Reconstructionist movement is that we should conduct rituals, pray and create communal experiences that are based in our contemporary values, including a rational approach around God. In some Reconstructionist communities, it might feel counter cultural to open up the God conversation in a way that does not necessitate rationalism as an entry point.

    Although I appreciate our movement’s integrity on this topic, I also strongly believe that without releasing ourselves of an expectation to be rational when entering the conversation, we limit our creativity and autonomy. For many in and out of the Jewish context, the conversation around God is centered around belief. The God Cafe works to combat this notion. I do not believe that belief is where this conversation must begin. In the God Cafe workshop, I have decided to center our conversations around experience. At the core of all the work I do lies the previously stated question: “What is a specific time in your life where you found yourself connecting to or grappling with God and/or divinity?” I have found by centering around a particular moment in one’s life, it gives space for individual agency. Theology becomes not just a project for a well-written theologian but rather for every individual. At the core of Reconstructionist Judaism is the pursuit of Jewish community that is accessible and resonant for the masses; where individuals are empowered to be knowledgeable and grounded leaders in their communities. What more beautiful way to model that pursuit than with an exploration of the Divine?

    Throughout my experience leading these conversations across diverse communities, I have learned something core about my own belief system; that more than anything I believe that people have the natural authority to make and notice meaning in our lives. I see central to my job as a future rabbi and leader in the Jewish community the need to continuously create space for others to believe that as well. 

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    Eric Caplan

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  • The Democracy Project

    It is often observed that for Mordecai Kaplan (and others) democracy was the religion of America. 
    The Kaplan Center appreciates our grant from the Jewish Partnership for Democracy: A More Perfect Union. This grant allows us to embark on a “religious” journey from this February through next October. Each month we will select and distribute to our friends and partners a passage from Mordecai Kaplan or one of his students and collaborators.

    FEBRUARY 2024

    This month features Rabbi Manny Goldsmith, zichrono l’veracha.

    For Kaplan, the idea underlying democracy is that the interests uniting human beings, if they become truly aware of those interests, are strong enough to ward off the divisive influence of people’s differences. The crucial problem of freedom is how to guard our individuality and the capacity to think for ourselves and yet cooperate with those whose backgrounds, upbringings and outlooks are different from our own. This is an art, said Kaplan, that human beings are slow to learn. Democracy should be conceived as a process of social experimentation by which people are seeking to learn that art and to apply, step by step, the wisdom acquired as a result of such experimentation. That is why the art of free, voluntary cooperation, the ultimate objective of democracy, must constantly be cultivated.

    -Rabbi Manny Goldsmith, Reconstructionism Today, Spring 2003

    VOTE

    • In your own life, how do you balance authenticity and devotion to your beliefs and deeply understand the belief systems of those different than yourself?
    • How do your communities engage in the ongoing “experimentation” of creating balance between these two forces?
    •  Why indeed are we so slow to practice “the art of democracy?  
    • In your own life, when do you practice this “art of democracy” most naturally and fully?

    MARCH 2024

    This month features Kaplan’s diary entry from Thursday, Dec 24, 1942

    The contribution which Judaism has made and should continue to make to democracy and the American way of life is best summarized in the motto enunciated by the prophet Zachariah. [ 4:6 ] “Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit saith the Lord of Hosts,” and to add the supplement of Hillel’s famous summary of Judaism, “the rest is commentary, go and learn.”

    The importance of Zachariah’s motto is that it furnishes the key to that inner freedom without which democracy is merely a hollow form.  “Not by might nor by power but by my spirit” sets forth the mental attitude which is a prerequisite to the building of a world on the foundations of peace.  Before we can have democracy in action, we must will it…

    VOTE

    • When do you experience democracy in a “hollow form” in our political life?  What accounts for its hollowness?
    • When is democracy “thick and textured” as opposed to hollow?
    •  In 2024, is democracy more “hollow” or more “thick and textured”?  
    • What role does media play in “thickening’ and “hollowing “ our experience of democracy?

    APRIL 2024

    This month features Kaplan’s diary entry from August 10, 1939 on Facism, Mobocracy, and Democracy

    After mentioning the two factors which have contributed to the rise of mobocracy, viz: a) the stupendous machinery of communication which unites millions into a seething sea of human emotion, and b) the failure of democracy to make good its promise of bringing special privilege under control.

     The rulers in a mobocracy know that they can gain control of the masses by instilling in them hate and fears of some common enemy who has to be augmented to gigantic proportions if he is comparatively insignificant and harmless, and who has to be invented if he is non-existent. For their purposes, mankind must be treated as broken up into classes or nations or tribes that are engaged in a mutual life and death struggle. The purpose of propaganda is to fan the flames of hate.

    VOTE

    • How do media and “mobocracy” work together to make the challenge even more severe in 2024?
    • What is the difference between acculturation and propaganda?
    • What are the most potent forces in today’s American democracy that can provide unity rather than fragmentation? 
    • DeTocqueville spoke of the “tyrrany of the majority”.  How does this play into our contemporary challenge to democracy?

    Dr. Elliot Dorff

    Join Dr. Jeffrey Schein in conversation with Dr. Elliot Dorff, author of recently published Ethics at the Center: Jewish Theory and Practice for Living a Moral Life, for reflections on Judaism and Democracy

    https://vimeo.com/964859569?share=copy

    JUNE 2024

    This month features an excerpt from Kaplan’s The Future of the American Jew

    On Democracy and Education

    What the democratic peoples then lacked and still  lack, is a clear recognition of power as that around the use of which any educational system, that is to help them live, must be built. A democratic system of education should train the young to regard all power which the individual possesses and acquires as misused, unless, it is somehow shared with all mankind. That is to be taken literally, and not merely as a pious wish.

    VOTE

    • In what way is the power of democratic learning as much a privilege and responsibility as a right?
    • Progressive education is here being critiqued by Kaplan for not only starting with the individual but stopping with her.  Do you concur?
    •  Kaplan also argued that “peoplehood” goes wrong when democracy and individuality overwhelm?  Do you agree? 
    • To paraphrase another great American, ask not what your skills and passions can do for you but how can they also be put to the uses of Jewish Peoplehood.  Why is this such a hard question to ask?

    JULY 2024

    This month features an excerpt from Kaplan’s 1945 Siddur: That America Fulfill the Promise of Its Founding, a prayer for Independence Day

    May America remain loyal to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and extend their application to ever-widening areas of life.

    Keep out of our life all manner of oppression, persecution, and unjust discrimination; save us from religious, racial and class conflicts; may our country be a haven of refuge to the victims of injustice and misrule.

    Instruct us in the art of living together, of reconciling differences of opinion and averting clashes of interest, of helping one another to achieve a harmonious and abundant life. …

    May America be ever hospitable to new revelations of truth in science and philosophy, ever sensitive to the appeal of beauty in nature and art, ever responsive to the call of duty and the spirit of religious consecration and worship; And may Americans so love their country that they shall withhold no sacrifice required to safeguard its life and to fulfill its promise.

    VOTE

    • This is written as a prayer, and thus had hope attached to it as well as action. Do you feel its context is equally relevant today?
    • In what ways have the American people fulfilled the reflection that Kaplan included?
    • What does harmony and abundance mean in the context of modern democracy? 
    • Are you in agreement that progress towards the ideal fulfillment of the American dream includes philosophy? Art? Religion?
    • How might you reword this last sentence in the era of the internet, or is it still relevant as it stands?

    AUGUST 2024

    This month features an excerpt from Kaplan’s The New Haggadah For the Pesach Seder

    For our forefathers, Pharoah was the symbol of all those tyrants who ever acted as though they were gods, and whose will had to be obeyed without question, on penalty of torture or death. And that is why Pesach means more than that first emancipation the Israelites won from Pharaoh when they left Egypt. It means the emancipation the serfs in the Middle Ages won from their overlords; the freedom the slaves won from their masters; the freedom the common people of countries won, when their kings were overthrown; it means the guarantee of the sacred rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The first emancipation was thus only a foreshadowing of all the emancipations that were to follow, and which will yet follow in the days to come.

    VOTE

    • How do you see democracy linked to emancipation from tyranny?
    • Is the use of biblical text and ideology useful to you and others as metaphoric in your understanding of current events?
    • What tyrannies are inhabiting your life currently? How might you work towards emancipation from them? 
    • Kaplan implies a sequential and continual change for the better – do you think he was right? What are the next set of emancipations you envisage being needed? Likely? Does what you think is needed coincide with that you imagine will happen next?

    SEPTEMBER 2024

    This month features an excerpt from Kaplan’s “Salvation through Labor,” a prayer for the Sabbath before Labor Day, adapted from the writings of A.D. Gordon (1945).

    In the day that is to come, you will be given, O man, a new spirit, and be stirred by new feelings, by a new hunger, not a hunger for bread nor a thirst for riches, but a hunger and thirst for work.

    And you will take pleasure in all the work that you do.

    You will give heed to do all your work as part of Nature, as part of the work of the universe and its expansiveness.

    And when you pause for a moment to straighten your back, and to take a deep breath, it is not only air that you will inhale; you will breathe in also a subtle something that will fructify your feeling and thinking, and add life and light to your spirit.

    You will have moments when your whole being seems to dissolve into the Infinite.

    VOTE

    • How do you envision the connection between work and change?
    • What are the many ways in which we can understand work?  How do you feel about the idea Kaplan fosters that engaging in labor is a way of engaging with the Divine? Does this change any dissatisfaction you might have with the ongoing struggle to create justice for all within our current democracy?
    • Does democracy by definition require continuous change?  What about our political structure do you think creates a continuous move away from stasis? Is this a good thing? 
    • How might you use Kaplan’s words as inspiration for yourself, your workplace, your communities?

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    Margie Jacobs

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