Hirsch Fishman
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by Marc B. Shapiro, Ph.D. — Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Scranton (We are grateful to Professor Shapiro for permission to republish this piece, and the accompanying materials, which first appeared, as part of a longer article covering other topics as well, on the Seforim blog [seforimblog.com] on September 10, 2014.) In…
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by Mel Scult It is a very rare occasion when Jews all come together as one people. We talk about it much but it rarely happens. We are all too often painfully divided. In synagogue this past Memorial Day Shabbat, I experienced the joy of seeing us Jews as one united people, or at least…
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by Mel Scult Sukkot is a richly symbolic holiday. Ordinarily we say that dwelling in booths like our ancestors in the desert reminds us of our vulnerability. But there are other possible meanings. Mordecai Kaplan, the radical socialist, proposed that in the desert everyone was equal. Everyone dwelt in booths, no rich and no poor.…
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In the summer of 1956, Kaplan was thinking about a sermon for Rosh Hashanah. It was his custom every year to meet with Conservative rabbis, his former students, and help them with their High Holiday sermons. They would come to the Jewish Theological Seminary sometime in the late summer, and Kaplan would give them concrete…
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by Mel Scult One of Kaplan’s favorite verses, almost a mantra for him, is from Psalm 34. Verse 9 reads “Ta’amu u’reu ki tov Adonai”. The JPS translation is accurate: “Taste and see how good the Lord is.” In my conversations with Kaplan in the 1970’s, he repeated this verse often. “Taste God” – what…
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Come and learn why you should know more about this fascinating rabbi than you probably do. On Sunday afternoon, December 3, 2017, we gathered at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in Manhattan for a conversation about Rabbi Miller with Ms. Ruth Messinger, Rabbi Philip Pohl, Dr. John Ruskay, and Rabbi Dr. Deborah Waxman, moderated by…
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by Mel Scult [See Chapter 6 of his Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century: A Biography of Mordecai M. Kaplan (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993).] Kaplan’s first congregation, The Jewish Center, was Orthodox. Seating was separate though equal and there was never any question of altering the synagogue ritual to include women. The major question of the…
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[All quotations are from Judaism as a Civilization unless otherwise indicated.] The Ultimate Goals of Jewish Education (Page 479) When a child grew up [in previous Jewish times] Judaism helped him in the conduct of his daily affairs and qualified him for membership in the social group without which he would have had no status…