About Kaplan
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Round 11 In 2022 we will be celebrating the centennial not only of the SAJ’s founding, but also of Judith Kaplan Eisenstein’s Bat Mitzvah. With that in mind, we ask: What famous 20th-century rabbi wrote the following regarding Bat Mitzvah? “Clear logic and principles of pedagogy virtually require equal celebration for a girl when she reaches the…
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For the next year, I will be using this space to post selections from the published writings of Mordecai Kaplan that address issues of continued relevance to Jewish (and non-Jewish) life. Most of these will be passages that are not well known. A new selection will be posted every month. For each passage chosen, I…
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by Mel Scult From time to time Mordecai Kaplan attempted to reduce his thinking about Judaism and religion to a series of principles that could be easily understood. We attempt yet again to summarize his thought in our own words. Kaplan’s approach to Judaism is usually associated with the primary concepts of his system –…
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(We are grateful to Dr. David Golomb, Professor Emeritus at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, for this translation.) Text of the Decree of Excommunication My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth (Psalm 121:2) The leaders of the people, rabbis of Greater New York and surroundings, heads of yeshivos, hasidic leaders, and…
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by Zachary Silver (We are grateful to the American Jewish Achives Journal for permission to republish this article, which first appeared there in Vol. 62, No. 1 (2010), pp. 21-48.)
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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…