About Kaplan
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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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A Forgotten Chapter in Denominational History (Proto-Conservative or Proto-Reconstructionist?) by Mel Scult Mordecai Kaplan is known primarily as an ideologue, a man of ideas, but he was also an institution builder of considerable significance. He was the first director (“principal” was his title) of the Teachers Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary. He remained in…
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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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Journal of Jewish Education Volume 80, Issue 4, 2014 Special Issue: The Legacy of Michael Rosenak, z”l The Educational Philosophies of Mordecai Kaplan and Michael Rosenak: Surprising Similarities and Illuminating Differences Jeffrey Schein & Eric Caplan Pages 388-410 Published online: 12 Dec 2014 Abstract The thoughts of Mordecai Kaplan and Michael Rosenak present surprising commonalities as…