Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983) was one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the 20th century. We believe that his thought may be even more important in the 21st century.
Upcoming Events
ROLE MODELS
Sun, June 26th, 3:00 (Eastern) , Webinar
Role models of Kaplanian lay leadership today. A discussion among rabbis to mark the yahrzeit of Dan Cedarbaum.
GOD IS HERE
Wed, August 30th, noon (Eastern), Webinar
Book club discussion of Rabbi Toba Spitzer’s new book, God is Here, exploring God as Metaphor
THE SAJ
Sunday June 12th, 1 PM, In Person at the SAJ
The SAJ as a Civilization: From Radical Vision to Community-Based Innovation, In Person Symposium
Keynote by Dr. Mel Scult
The Kaplan Center is so pleased to be a supporter of Marcia Falk’s Night of Beginnings. By the end of Pesach the original run of 5,000 Haggadot had sold out. and JPS and University of Nebraska are now planning a second printing.
Reflections on A Night of Beginnings
In the Talmud a distinction is made between judgments that are lehatchilah, in theory, and those that are bediavad, established through practice. As many of you know, the pragmatism of John Dewey and William James has been a major influence on Mordecai Kaplan. From the perspective of pragmatist philosophy, the deepest worth of an idea or endeavor is revealed through careful implementation and thoughtful reflection. What we thought was an absolute end turns out to be an end in view, itself now subject to revision after it has unfolded.
With these concepts in mind, we have invited four users of Night of Beginnings, Rabbi Morris Allen, Rabbi Jeffrey Schein, Rabbi Margie Jacobs, and Ben Schein, to share their thoughts and experiences with us. Perhaps this will help enhance your own use of Night of Beginnings beshanah haba’ah, next year.
From the Blog
Dan Cedarbaum, z”l
Eric Kaplan
Dr. Mel Scult
Rabbi Jeffrey Schein
Upcoming Webinars & Events
For a full list of past and upcoming events, click here
ROLE MODELS
Sunday, June 26th, 3:00 (Eastern) , Webinar
Role models of Kaplanian lay leadership today. A discussion among rabbis to mark the yahrzeit of Dan Cedarbaum.
GOD IS HERE
Sunday, August 30th, noon (Eastern), Webinar
Book club discussion of Rabbi Toba Spitzer’s new book, God is Here, exploring God as Metaphor
THE SAJ
Sunday June 12th, 1 PM, In Person at the SAJ, Keynote by Dr. Mel Scult
The SAJ as a Civilization: From Radical Vision to Community-Based Innovation, In Person Symposium
Upcoming Events
ROLE MODELS
Sunday, June 26th, 3:00 (Eastern) , Webinar
Role models of Kaplanian lay leadership today. A discussion among rabbis to mark the yahrzeit of Dan Cedarbaum.
GOD IS HERE
Sunday, August 30th, noon (Eastern), Webinar
Book club discussion of Rabbi Toba Spitzer’s new book, God is Here, exploring God as Metaphor
THE SAJ
Sunday June 12th, 1 PM, In Person at the SAJ
The SAJ as a Civilization: From Radical Vision to Community-Based Innovation, In Person Symposium
Keynote by Dr. Mel Scult
The Kaplan Center is so pleased to be a supporter of Marcia Falk’s Night of Beginnings. By the end of Pesach the original run of 5,000 Haggadot had sold out. and JPS and University of Nebraska are now planning a second printing.
Reflections on A Night of Beginnings
In the Talmud a distinction is made between judgments that are lehatchilah, in theory, and those that are bediavad, established through practice. As many of you know, the pragmatism of John Dewey and William James has been a major influence on Mordecai Kaplan. From the perspective of pragmatist philosophy, the deepest worth of an idea or endeavor is revealed through careful implementation and thoughtful reflection. What we thought was an absolute end turns out to be an end in view, itself now subject to revision after it has unfolded.
With these concepts in mind, we have invited four users of Night of Beginnings, Rabbi Morris Allen, Rabbi Jeffrey Schein, Rabbi Margie Jacobs, and Ben Schein, to share their thoughts and experiences with us. Perhaps this will help enhance your own use of Night of Beginnings beshanah haba’ah, next year.
THE BLOG
From our founding Executive Director, Dan Cedarbaum z”l
Why a Kaplan Center?
More than 80 years ago, at the very beginning of the very first issue of The Reconstructionist journal, Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan and his colleagues reprinted an editorial from a 1928 issue of that journal’s predecessor, The S.A.J. Review, succinctly explaining their reasons for the creation of a new movement. “[T]he problem of Jewish life is just th[e] problem of unity,” the editorial stated. “A solution to the problem of Jewish life depends upon finding, or making, a positive ideology which will enable both Orthodox and Reform, both believers and nonbelievers, to meet in common and to work together. It is only by conceiving Judaism as a civilization, and not as a general religious movement embracing many sects, that we will be able to construct such an ideology and reconstruct the Jewish civilization.” …
Mel’s Desk
God and Rising Above Despair (October 26, 2021)
Kaplan has been accused of a naive optimism that belongs to a previous era. But the truth is that we desperately need his faith in our ability to overcome the difficulties that life presents to us. We will not survive much less achieve salvation [sheleymut] if we succumb to despair, self-pity and doubt. We must rise above such feelings, and it is when we transcend ourselves in this sense that we grasp the true meaning of the divine in our lives. Kaplan puts it this way: “Every time we rise above corroding doubt, we grow in the awareness that what obtains in the depth of our personality is but an infinitesimal fraction of the creative and redemptive forces in the cosmos that spell God.”
December 16, 1942, Kaplan Diary. Communings of the Spirit, vol 3, 1942-1951. ed. Mel Scult (Wayne State University Press, 2020)
From our founding Executive Director, Dan Cedarbaum z”l
Kaplan and Birmingham (1963)
While working on a project for The Ira and Judith Kaplan Eisenstein Reconstructionist Archives of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (here), 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. …
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