Welcome to The Light Lab: Transformative Tâfillah, Together
Our mission is to make Jewish liturgy and prayer practice accessible and meaningful to all seekers.
Through our gatherings, programs, podcast, and collaborations, we unlock the transformative power of tefillah to strengthen our spiritual cores and revitalize our communities.
We envision a future where tefillah inspires, comforts, and empowers us towards Oneness and a healed world.
The Light Lab was founded by Eliana Light, a Jewish educator with 10+ years of experience translating tâfillah, spirituality, and g?d-language for all ages and stages. Learn more about Elianaâs professional development offerings here.
Listen to our flagship offering, the Light Lab Podcast! Episodes come out every other Thursday.
Weâve got expansive explorations of liturgy with co-hosts Eliana Light, Cantor Ellen Dreskin, and Rabbi Josh Warshawsky, and interviews with teachers, tâfillah leaders, and others in the spiritual space (past guests include Rabbi Steve Sager, Rabbi Sid Schwarz, Daphna Rosenberg of Nava Tehila, and Rabbi Deborah Sacks MIntz of Hadar). Plus, our detailed show notes enhance the learning experience even more.
Bring the Light Lab to your community for programs (in person or virtual) that engage, enlighten, and inspire:
The Deep Dive- Whether in services or teaching, we often rush through our liturgy. So letâs slow down. Through the Light Lab methodology of chevruta study, singing, and personal reflection, weâll take one gem of our liturgy and raise it to the light. What do our ancestors have to say to us right now? What does our own soul yearn to say? In this safe and supportive environment, letâs dive deep, open our hearts, and move from liturgy to prayer.
The Light Lab Podcast, Live! – Go âbehind the scenesâ and host your very own episode of the Light Lab Podcast, right in your very own zoom! Whether a round-table with the hosts, or an interview with your clergy, educators, or guests, itâs an exciting new way to learn together. Live chat and q&a offer even more interaction. Plus, your synagogue or organization will be named as a sponsor of the episode upon its release!
s*ngs ab-ut g?d: a divine musical exploration- What does âGodâ mean to you? How has that changed over the course of your life? How can music help us explore these big questions in our communities? And why do these questions matter? Through soulful, playful original songs rooted in sacred texts and personal story, we will sing, explore, and wrestle with g?d together.
Real Talk with the Universe: A Prayer-As-Poetry Workshop (with co-teacher Alexander Nemser). When we encounter our liturgy as poetry, we can allow its language to resonate with depth and possibility; when we approach our prayer-practice with mindfulness, we can align our intention to connect with the details of our breath, body and heart. Using these techniques, plus wisdom gleaned from Judaism and contemporary poetry, weâll dive into a prayer, ritual, or holiday of your choice. We invite you to open to an authentic experience of prayer in a new way: to write, to breathe, to learn, and to open your imagination to soulful possibilities.
rise&shine online- What if instead of singing our prayers, we could dance them? rise&shine is an immersive, embodied, heart-centered journey through the liturgy, expertly guided and lovingly curated. Put on your headphones and let the house beats open your soul to joy.
Additionally, Eliana has over 8 years of experience as an artist in residence, combining prayer leadership, concerts, consulting, and learning at all levels.
To learn more about artist-in-residence shabbatot, tâfillah consulting, or any of the programs listed here, contact us at welcome@lightlab.co.
Stay in the loop by following the Light Lab on instagram and facebook.
Beneath the Surface: Mordecai Kaplanâs Philosophical Commitments Explored
Sunday, February 11, 2024 â 3pm Eastern
with Dr. Nadav Berman and Dr. Rabbi Vered Sakal
How does Mordecai Kaplan arrive at his understandings of truth and religious experience? Join Drs. Berman and Sakal as they explore Kaplan through the lens of the non-Jewish theologian Jon Hicks. Dialogue with them as they extrapolate from Kaplanâs philosophical commitments to the critical issues of a 21st Zionism and the presence of evil in the world.
Our Kaplanian voices series seeks to sensitize us to the unique ways many of us experience the very notion of Peoplehood in 2023.Below are excerpts from conversation between Rabbis Jeffrey Eisenstat, founding director of our movementâs Camp Havaya, and former camp counselors about their initial exposures to the philosophies of Mordecai Kaplan a decade ago and its present meaning to them as young adult Jews in their thirties.
https://vimeo.com/882745010?share=copy
Yael Kurganoff on the power of Camp Havaya connections to Israel
Visit the Ira Eisenstein portal where you will find….
Introductions by Rabbi Richard Hirsh to Ira Eisensteinâs books Creative Judaism and What We Mean by Religion withdigital copies of those currently out-of-print volumesnow available on our website
Reflections about Ira Eisenstein as theologian and wise leader by Rabbis Dennis Sasso and Jeffrey Schein
A recording of Rabbi Eisensteinâs contributions that was hosted by the SAJ:Judaism that Stands For All as part of its centenary celebration
Innovation is valid, appropriately current, understandable by target audience, authoritative, and appropriate.
Innovation is partially valid, less than appropriately current, garners less than complete understanding by target audience, is incomplete in elements of authority and appropriateness.
Innovation is invalid, outdated, not understandable by target audience, deficient in authority and appropriateness.
Creativity â under Inspired Innovation
Breakthrough approach or new paradigm.
Incremental improvement or new practice or tool
Standard approach
Feasibility & Risk under Support Implementation
Is feasible/realistic and highly likely to produce desirable outcomes. Associated risks are minimal.
Is reasonably feasible/realistic and likely to produce desirable outcomes. Associated risks are moderate.
Is unrealistic/unfeasible and unlikely to produce desirable outcomes. Associated risks are unacceptable.
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 an earlier post [on the Seforim blog from June 6, 2014] I referred to Mel Scultâs new book, The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan. Scult discusses the burning of Kaplanâs siddur at an Agudas ha-Rabbonim gathering on June 12, 1945, at which Kaplan was himself also put in herem. The significance of this event can be seen in that there were over two hundred rabbis in attendance.[23]
Here is the text of the herem from Ha-Pardes, July 1945.
[For an English translation of the core of the herem document, click here.]
The sentence immediately before the text of the herem clearly implies that the burning of the book was part of the ceremony (and see also Ha-Pardes, Nov. 1945 p. 23). Thus, Jeffrey S. Gurock and Jacob J. Schacter had good reason to write as follows:
Scult, Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century, p. 420, n. 38, suggests that the act of book burning was unintentioned and not directed by the rabbinic leaders themselves, but all evidence cited above points to the contrary. This was clearly an official act, sanctioned by those assembled as a fitting and appropriate conclusion to a most serious and solemn deliberation.[24]
Zachary Silver, who has recently written a very nice article on the episode, available here, writes as follows:
Mel Scultâs biography of Kaplan mentions that the event occurred, but he does not believe that Agudat HaRabbanim burned the book as part of the formal ceremony. Rather, he says that the burning occurred incidentally at the back of the room. However, Agudat HaRabbanimâs documents illustrate that it was a previously scripted formula. [25]
This burning of a Jewish book, coming so soon after the end of the Holocaust and so much at odds with the American tradition of freedom of expression, horrified both Jews and non-Jews. The fact that the excommunication and burning were covered in TheNew York Times only made matters worse, and everyone assumed that this was an officially sanctioned action of Agudat ha-Rabbanim.
In writing about the event in his diary, Kaplan referred to ârabbinical gangsters who resort to nazi [!] methods in order to regain their authority.â[26] He later publicly stated as follows:
It is just too bad that men who call themselves rabbis should in this day and age resort to the barbarous procedure of outlawing a man without giving him a hearing, and to the Nazi practice of burning books that displease them. God save us from such leadership and from the disgrace it is likely to bring upon Jews.[27]
Responding to the horror aroused by the book-burning, Agudat ha-Rabbanim publicly declared that it had nothing to do with this action. It claimed that the burning was done independently by one of its members. Silver writes:
The Union of Orthodox Rabbis later disavowed responsibility for the book burning, claiming that the event was not a scheduled part of the ceremony but rather the act of one rabbi from the audience who acted on his own, after the service was completed. This version seems unlikely, however, since the article about the excommunication in HaPardes, the unofficial magazine of Agudat HaRabbanim, gives specific justification for the book burning as part of the ceremony and does so in halakhic terms. The more likely scenario is that, after witnessing the heated public reaction, Agudat Harabbanim chose to disavow responsibility for burning the siddur as a face-saving public relations move. Thus, by saying that the burning was not part of the planned activities, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis could attempt to refocus public attention on the greater issues of the heresy of Kaplan and the Conservative movement, rather than on a particularly unsettling segment of the ceremony, which itself evoked memories of Nazi ritual book burnings. Of course, the uproar implies that Agudat Ha-Rabbanim did not realize that most Americans would be troubled by a book burning in 1945 â a lapse of judgment that would manifest the extent by which the Union of Orthodox Rabbis had lost touch with contemporary currents in American culture.[28]
Years after the event, R. Norman Lamm reflected on the book burning.
If we want to win people over to Orthodoxy, we need to present ourselves as measured, mature, and moderate people with deep faith and the right practice, but we do not insult others and we do not damage or condemn them. Coming out with issurim [decrees that forbid particular actions] against everyone else is like another Fatwa. When I was younger there was a heretic by the name of Mordecai Kaplan, and the Agudas Harabbonim had this whole big book burning party. I thought it was ridiculous to have a book burning in the twentieth century. It didnât make anybody decide to become more religious observant. Nobody who was reading his books said[,] âIf important Orthodox rabbis burned them, weâre not going to read them.â If anything, it aroused interest in people who otherwise would not have wanted to read these books. But in addition, what it accomplished was that it got people to look at the Orthodox as fanatics. Thatâs no way to make friends and win people over to Orthodoxy.[29]
What we see from what I have quoted is that there is agreement that it was Agudat ha-Rabbanim that sanctioned the burning of the siddur.[30] Silver adds, âIt is unclear who actually burned the siddur, as the report in HaPardes uses the passive voice.â
In fact, we do know who burnt the siddur, Based on this information, we can also determine that the other point that âeveryoneâ knows, that it was Agudat ha-Rabbanim that sanctioned the burning, is incorrect.
In 1945 The Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation published a booklet, A Challenge to Freedom of Worship. I donât know why, but this is a very rare publication. I have therefore uploaded it here. From this booklet, you get a sense of the great ill-will produced by the excommunication of Kaplan and the burning of his siddur. This is what appears on the very first page of the booklet.
I first saw this booklet shortly before R. Joseph Ralbag passed away. At that time he was not well and I could not schedule a time to speak with him. However, at my request R. Aryeh Ralbag asked his father some questions about the episode, and I can report the following from the late R. Joseph Ralbag. R. Ralbag did not decide on the spur of the moment to burn the siddur. Rather, he knew he was going to do this ahead of time and even discussed it with his future wife. Yet the other members of Agudat ha-Rabbanim were unaware of his plans until he lit the siddur on fire. In other words, this was an individual act by R. Ralbag and, as Agudat ha-Rabbanim would later state, it was not sanctioned by them. This testimony, from the main protagonist of the event, should finally settle the matter. (Although R. Ralbag denied burning the siddur in the telephone call referred to on the page printed above, this was obviously only said to protect himself after the controversy broke out. As indicated, hundreds of people saw him burn the siddur.[31])
One more interesting point about this episode is that Rav Tzair (Chaim Tchernowitz) claimed, in the course of an attack against Kaplanâs siddur, that according to halakhah it was forbidden to burn the work.[32] I would be curious to hear what some of the readers make of this.
[23] See Zachary Silver, âThe Excommunication of Mordecai Kaplan,â American Jewish Archives 62 (2010), p. 23.
[24] A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community (New York, 1997), p. 206 n. 14
[25] Silver, âThe Excommunication of Mordecai Kaplan,â p. 40 n. 2.
[26] Quoted in Silver, âThe Excommunication of Mordecai Kaplan,â p. 23.
[27] Quoted in Silver, âThe Excommunication of Mordecai Kaplan,â p. 32.
[28] Silver, âThe Excommunication of Mordecai Kaplan,â p. 24.
[29] Quoted in Silver, âThe Excommunication of Mordecai Kaplan,â p. 39.
[30] Other sources could also be quoted in support of this assertion. The only source I have found that states otherwise is Simon Noveck, Milton Steinberg: Portrait of a Rabbi (New York, 1978), p. 183.
On June 12, 1945, a few days after the appearance of the Bublick review, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada held a special meeting at the McAlpin Hotel in New York to protest the new prayer book. Attended by more than two hundred rabbis, the gathering unanimously voted to issue a writ of excommunication against Mordecai Kaplan as the principal editor of the prayer book. With solemn ceremony, the entire audience rose and repeated, word by word, the text of the first psalm, after which the traditional ban was promulgated. Immediately thereafter, one member of the group suddenly took a copy of the ânew heretical prayer book,â placed it on the speakerâs stand, and set fire to it. The Union later disavowed responsibility for the burning, maintaining that the action had been taken by a single rabbi after the formal meeting was over. All admitted, however, that no effort had been made by those present to prevent the prayer book from being burned.
The first Psalm begins âHappy is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the wicked.â
[31] The page printed above quotes a text from the June 21, 1945 New York Times disavowing R. Ralbagâs action. However, there is no such passage in the New York Times. Perhaps it appeared in the Yiddish Jewish Morning Journal which also covered the event.
[32] Siddur Tefilah shel Toâim u-Matâim (New York, 1946), p. 4. This work used to be on hebrewbooks.org but was removed. You can now find it here.
Rabbi Richard Hirshâs Introduction toWhat We Mean By Religion by Ira Eisenstein (1938)
What We Mean By Religion focuses on Shabbat and the Jewish holidays, and was based on Mordecai Kaplanâs 1936 volume The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion [MOG]. That book was assembled from holiday sermons Kaplan gave at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ), as edited by Rabbi Eugene Kohn. It is in MOG that Kaplan coins the phrase âGod is the Power That Makes for Salvationâ with reference to Shabbat.
Where Eisensteinâs earlier book, Creative Judaism, was written for adults as a simplified version of Judaism As a Civilization, What We Mean By Religion was written for âthe younger generation of Jews,â with the hope that by reading it, âthey would not brush aside Jewish religion with impatience,â or feel âthey must accept beliefs against which their reason rebelled.â
Put differently, What We Mean By Religion seems to have been aimed atJews of Bânei Mitzvah age and perhaps also for those studying for confirmation at around age sixteen. (While the SAJ did not conduct confirmation services, there was an annual Shavuot ceremony for teens, often including cantatas written by Ira and Judith Kaplan Eisenstein.) In addition to presenting many of Kaplanâs insights from MOG, What We Mean By Religion was the first Reconstructionist attempt to translate those insights into an educational curriculum for Jewish teens.
What We Mean By Religion focuses less on God as âthe Power thatâŠâ than on a humanistic extraction of key ideas from each of the Jewish holidays. Each chapter includes discussion questions aimed at teenagers. Rabbi Eisensteinâs goal was to translate the âJudaism saysâ that so many Jewish teens grew up with into questions: âwhat does Judaism have to say about the issues of life that you experience every day?â Put differently, he wanted to use the holidays as opportunities to invite discussion about, for example, modern meanings of freedom (Pesach), sin (Yom Kippur), and holiness (Shabbat).
The final questions Eisenstein asks are: âHow has [this book] changed your views about religion? What old ideas did you learn to discard? What new ones did you acquire?â These are not questions limited to Jewish teens, but perennial ones that we continue to ask: how do we access Jewish tradition as a resource as we move through the entirety of life, leaving aside certain things, engaging with others, and, always, asking questions rather than seeking answers.
Between 1972 and 1975, Dr. Mel Scult conducted about 50 hours of taped interviews with Mordecai Kaplan, some of his family, and several of his students. In these recordings, Kaplan talks about his early life and the influences of his parents and teachers on the development of his world view
What jumps out immediately is that Kaplan is deeply committed to honesty âhis own and that of others as they (we) engage with Judaism and its reconstruction. Kaplan inherited this passion for honesty from his father, Israel Kaplan, and sought to pass it on to his own rabbinical students.
Kaplan relates that his father was âvery critical of peopleâs ethical behavior.â He rejected Hasidism, in part, because he was bothered by âthe politics, yes power politicsâ which characterized the Hasidic movement. They competed with one another for disciples. He didnât like that.â In his view, power politics had displaced ethics and intellectual honesty in the Hasidic world. Israel Kaplan rejected at least one rabbinic position offered to him while the Kaplans still lived in Europe because, as Mordecai tells it, the members of the congregation prayed wearing a gartel, âa belt worn by Hasidim during prayers to separate the upper from the lower regions of the body.â
Kaplan also mentions his fatherâs chagrin at being sent to Syracuse as a mashgiach looking into the Passover kashrut of a sugar company. When he came back..he told me, âwhat was there that could be hametz in the manufacturer of sugar?â In other words, this is an instance of graft-its not honest. This was a form of duplicity Israel Kaplan could not tolerate. He walked away from his position in the court of the chief rabbi and struggled to earn a living in America for the rest of his life.
In these conversations with Scult, Kaplan notes parenthetically that his own professional experience, upon completing his smikha at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1902, led him to better understand his fatherâs choice to only work for institutions in which he could feel both ethically and intellectually comfortable. âBefore I became a member of the Seminary faculty [in 1909]… I was very unhappy as the Orthodox rabbi at Kehillat Jeshurun⊠because I couldn’t be intellectually honest in that position.â
Kaplan elaborates his view on the centrality of honesty in a Reconstructionist pluralistic approach to Judaism in a conversation with campers at Camp Cejwin. He emphasizes that spirit and honesty, which distinguish human beings from other creatures, have the potential to bring about universal peace and creative survival.
Kaplanâs devotion to truth is also reflected in his Scholarâs Prayer, reprinted in the Kol Haneshemah: Limot Hol/ Daily Prayer Book, p. 28.
From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth,
From the laziness that is content with half-truths,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
O Lord of Truth, deliver us.
According to two of his students, Rabbis Ray Artz and Michael Graetz,Kaplan often recited recited this prayer (sometimes alternating with Biblical passages) before every class he led, and no other JTS professor led class with a prayer! And he, reputedly the godless one! (cf. Rabbi Michael Cohenâs conversation with Rabbis Arz and Graetz in the âI Remember Mordecaiâ section of the Kaplan Center website.)
Indeed, perhaps no group so consistently heard Kaplanâs message as did the rabbinical students he taught over five decades. When Kaplan resigned from the Seminary in 1927â(he later withdrew his letter of resignation)–the Chancellor of the Seminary, Cyrus Adler, received a letter from Milton Steinberg, then president of the student body, expressing the studentsâ collective debt to Kaplan. By approaching the tradition with honesty, creativity and clarity, Kaplan imparted to them a Judaism which they, and their future congregants, could embrace wholeheartedly.
There is preeminently one man among our teachers who is responsible for what faith, and courage, and vision we may lay claim to. It is from him that we have acquired the hardihood to go on in a difficult and discouraging cause, for it is he who has given the Judaism we expected to teach the content and vitality we have elsewhere sought in vain. He made the cause a creative venture, when it was otherwise a pursuit without purpose and without clarity. We have seen in him that clear and simple passion for spiritual honesty which we believe is the first desideratum in American Jewish life. And if we, his students, have learned something of that spiritual honesty our debt is to him. He has taught us devotion and given us things worthy of devotion when we had almost lost the faith that these were anywhere to be discovered. His example has given us to understand that creative spiritual activity was still possible in Jewish life and his was an example we have been sadly in need of. Preeminently our teacher and guide, we feel that the departure of Professor Kaplan will leave us utterly divorced from the things most worth learning, without the guidance toward those values which we believe Conservative Judaism ought to conserve and create.
While speaking to Scult, Kaplan noted that he was lucky that the Jewish communities of the 20th Century had a greater tolerance for expressions of personal religious truths than did the Jewish communities of the past.
It was fortunate that I lived in an age when they didnât execute … and when excommunication didnât mean anything, as it did in the case of Spinoza. After alI, I did exactly the same kind of thing as Spinoza did in his time.Â
But as we approach the 40th anniversary of Kaplanâs yahrzeit we should avoid one of the things Kaplan most detested: smugness and self-satisfaction. Dr. Eric Caplan observed in one of our recent Kaplan Center webinars that Kaplan expected congregations affiliated with his thought to walk the walk even more than talk the talk. They needed to constantly scrutinize their own institutions and structure, perform a heshbon hanefesh of their individual and communal lives, and observe a high standard of ethical behavior and intellectual honesty.
The Mordecai M. Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood is proud to have underwritten the production costs of Marcia Falkâs new haggadah, Night of Beginnings. In the essay belowâexcerpted from the Introduction to that haggadahâFalk presents her goals in writing the haggadah and surveys its unique features.
The intention of Night of Beginnings is to do more than âupdateâ the traditional liturgy, to do more than make it consonant with contemporary thinking and sensibilities. This haggadah is an attempt to go beyond these aims to reveal meanings beneath the surface of the Pesach ritual and to deepen our personal connections to the holiday.
In our times, we have seen a profusion of different kinds of haggadot. And yet, strikingly, one is hard-pressed to find in any haggadah, ancient or modern, a full recounting of the biblical story. It is doubly ironic that, although the word-root of both haggadah and Maggid (the central portion of this haggadah) means âtelling,â the standard haggadah does not actually tell the Exodus storyâin fact, it does not offer a continuous narrative at all. Instead, it provides tastingsârabbinic anecdotes, comments, and exhortations, punctuated with biblical quotationsâthat show us how the generations of rabbis who created and redacted the haggadah viewed the purpose and meaning of the Pesach festival and how they wanted us to view and observe it. For many of us, this compilation fails to engage the way that stories do and fails to draw us deeply into our own search for the festivalâs meaning.
In recounting the full Bible story, Night of Beginnings seeks to provide a more direct connection to the origins of the holiday. âMaggid: The Tellingââ which is not only the centerpiece of this haggadah but one of its three main innovative elementsâoffers a compressed version of the Exodus narrative, beginning with the Israelitesâ enslavement and ending with their crossing the Sea of Reeds. Presented this way, the narrative is revealed to have a dramatic trajectory with an opening, a climax, and a denouement. No attempt has been made here to make the character of God gender-inclusive; in the Exodus story God is decidedly male, and it is this story that we investigate and seek to understand in all its complexity, on seder night. Importantly, unlike the standard haggadah, which omits any mention of the storyâs main human protagonists, âMaggid: The Tellingâ includes the voices and actions not just of Moshe and his brother, Aaron, but of the female characters, among them Mosheâs mother; his sister, Miriam; Pharaohâs daughter, who adopts the baby Moshe; and the midwives Shifrah and Puâah, who save the lives of Hebrew male infants. Interspersed throughout the narration is a new commentary, indicated in bold letters, that raises questions of interpretation and invites us to bring our personal experiences into the discussion.
Besides âMaggid: The Telling,â Night of Beginnings offers two other major innovations: new bârakhot (plural of bârakhah, blessing), which are re-creations, in Hebrew and in English, of the traditional blessings; and kavanot (plural of kavanah, intention, or direction of the heart), a genre that is entirely new to the seder ritual.
In addition to offering new imagery, the bârakhot differ from rabbinic prayer in their mode of address: rather than passively acknowledging a âblessed You,â they open with inclusive, active verbs, such as nâvarekh (let us bless) and nodeh (let us thank), calling upon us, the human community, to perform the act of blessing. Some of the bârakhot open directly with an image, leaving the invocation implied. Each bârakhah is introduced with a quotation from Tanakh, linking it to our most ancient texts. All the bârakhot ask that we bring our attention to the fullness of the moment and, at times, that we commit to fulfilling the words of the blessing with action, not just ritually but in the acts of our ordinary daily lives. Bârakhot are the core of every seder ritual, as they are in this haggadah; simply put, without them there is no seder.
The kavanot in Night of Beginnings amplify the bârakhot, and we might think of them as the sederâs heart. If the bârakhot are short lyric poems that touch down lightly on single momentsâthe lighting of candles, the eating of matzahâthe kavanot take the form of longer prose-poems and meditations, inviting us to delve more deeply and broadly, lingering over images, themes, and motifs, and allowing ourselves to enter more fully and more personally into the experience of the night.
Underlying many aspects of Night of Beginnings is the motif of hiddenness-and-uncovering. In âMaggid: The Telling,â this motif is recurrent: Moshe starts life hidden in a basket in the Nile, and over the course of the narrative he becomes a prominent leader and a prophet. This progression from the concealed and inchoate to a revealed identity parallels the emergence of the Israelites from enslavement into peoplehood. So too, in Exodus 3 God reveals His heretofore hidden nameâEhyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (I Am That I Am)âto Moshe for the first time.
The framework of the seder ritual echoes this motif. Near the start of the seder, the leader hides the afikoman (a broken-off piece of matzah) and, toward the end of the meal, the afikomanâessential for concluding the sederâis found.
In an essay entitled âRevealment and Concealment in Language,â the great twentieth-century Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik wrote of how language conceals truths and yet how, paradoxically, when crafted as poetry, language can reveal the hidden core of things. Night of Beginnings speaks, in large part, in the language of poetryâwith bârakhot and lyric poems created specially for the seder, kavanot that take the form of prose poems, biblical psalms, readings from the Song of Songs, and modern poems. This assemblage of poetic modes will, I hope, serve to uncover meanings and nuances that might otherwise be buried or obscured. This is a poetâs Passover, and as we read aloud from it, we all partake in poetryâs power to reveal. In this sense, on seder night, we are all poets.
The theme of concealment and revealment embedded in Night of Beginnings has implications for our personal attainment of freedom. Self-awarenessâbeing revealed to oneselfâis a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for freedom. The less one is hidden from oneself, the greater oneâs potential for self-actualization, the fruit of a freely chosen life. And the greater oneâs freedom, the better oneâs ability to pursue freedom and justice in the world. Self-awareness is not just a necessary condition for personal freedom; it is the grounding of oneâs awareness of the needs of othersâthe first step in the journey out of the wilderness.
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 will provide a brief introduction that places it in its historical context and situates it within the rest of Kaplanâs thought. After each excerpt, I will share my own thoughts on the passage and then invite you to post your own response to it. My hope is that this forum will thereby become a venue for a vibrant discussion of contemporary issues in Jewish life that is in dialogue with the thought of Mordecai Kaplan. Teaching Kaplan at McGill University and elsewhere, I have seen that engaging with Kaplan in this way leads to rich conversations.
This monthâs selection is taken from Questions Jews Ask: Reconstructionist Answers. This book was published by the Reconstructionist Press in 1956 and gathers together many of the âKnow how to Answerâ columns that Kaplan wrote for The Reconstructionist magazine throughout the 1950s. These columns were responses to questions addressed to Kaplan in writing at lectures given in the late 1940s and early 1950s. (Kaplan insisted that audiences submit their questions on note cards because he believed that this both led to clearer questions and encouraged them to formulate their thoughts as a question.) The book divides the columns thematicallyâJewish peoplehood, God, ritual etc.âand each section begins with a significant article published in The Reconstructionistthat challenged Kaplanâs approach to the subject, followed by the response that Kaplan published at the time. The Reconstructionist Press also released an accompanying six-LP box set of Kaplan reading his answers to many of these questions (unfortunately, the question below is not one of them).
Questions Jews Ask is one of my favorite Kaplan books because it presents the cornerstones of his thought clearly and succinctly and occasionally discusses issues that Kaplan does not address elsewhere. The selection below (from pp. 197-198) reflects both of these aspects of the book. Kaplan is asked a question that is not much explored in his other writings. His answer touches upon central concerns in his thought–the experience of the working class, Judaism as a force for social justice, the creation of organic Jewish communities in the diasporaâbut connects them in a way that is both new and thought-provoking. Here is the text:
How should we reckon with the general tendency of Jewish workers to keep aloof from the Synagogue and institutional religion?
We should try to face the problem realistically. Labor does not keep aloof from the synagogue primarily on ideological grounds. Under existing conditions, the Synagogue depends for its maintenance on those who can afford to provide the necessary resources. The average worker is in no position to contribute to those resources in adequate measure. Not being a member of a congregation, he is deprived of the services of the rabbi, the teacher and other members of the congregationâs staff, whose function it is to foster the religious expression of Jewish life. Lacking such guidance, he soon loses touch with institutional religion. It is natural for him then to seek and to find a rationale to justify his apathy or antagonism.
That condition will prevail as long as religious services are rendered only to those who can afford to join a congregation. Thus, congregations will remain middle-class institutions. Some congregational organizations and rabbinic bodies have occasionally tried to grapple with the problem. They have endeavored to make membership accessible to workers of limited means. Their offer, however, has never been taken up. The reason is not far to seek. Members of congregations, like those of social clubs, tend to associate with people of the same social and economic status as their own. Consequently, Jews of a different social and economic status do not feel at home in the society of those who are the principal financial supporters of the Synagogue.
Not only does this condition have an injurious effect on the religion of the workers whom it keeps away from the Synagogue; it has a bad effect also on the membership of the congregation itself. Being confined to middle-class people, the synagogue runs the danger of identifying religion with the interests of the middle-class, of covering with a cloak of respectability the social and economic transgressions of its members, of providing them with an anodyne against pangs of conscience, instead of sensitizing their consciences. If these Jews could meet in the Synagogue on an equal plane with Jews of the underprivileged group, who suffer from social injustice, it would deflate the pride of possession and help foster better social and ethical attitudes.
The only alternative to the present situation is the establishment of organic Jewish communities. In an organic community, the fostering of Jewish religion would not be left to the private initiative of socially congenial and economically homogenous groups organized as congregations; it would be the responsibility of the entire community. Just as in certain Christian denominations, affiliation is with the parish rather than with a congregation, so in Judaism affiliation should be with the local community. Membership in the community should entitle every Jew to the religious services he needs. The Jewish community should be responsible for making facilities for worship and education available to all Jews who desire them, on the same principle that the civic community assumes responsibility for public education and public health.
Kaplan makes several points here that are of great relevance to contemporary Jewish life. Most poor and lower middle class Jews continue to stay away from synagogues in North America, and the Jewish community has not succeeded in changing this by offering reduced price memberships. Some non-Orthodox synagogues have made dues voluntary, but it is unclear whether this has led more poor and lower middle class Jews to join. Also, bringing in these constituencies does not seem to be the primary aim of the new dues model (see, in this regard, Are Voluntary Dues Right for Your Synagogue?, published by UJA-Federation of New York). The net result is that the clear majority of synagogues remain middle class, if not upper middle class, institutions and this, as Kaplan points out, does make it less likely that joining a synagogue will lead Jews to question how they spend their money and time. Kaplan assumes, correctly in my view, that becoming friends in synagogue with people who are facing serious financial difficulties would increase our empathy for the poor and lead to higher levels of social activism and generosity.
Per the Pew Research Centerâs 2013 study of American Jews, 42% of Jewish households have combined incomes above $100,000, while 31% have combined incomes below $50,000. In contrast, only 18% of the general US population have household earnings of $100,000 or more, but 56% have earnings below $50,000. In other words, North American Jews, in general, are an exceptionally wealthy community, and when we gather it is inevitable that the well off significantly outnumber the people with modest or inadequate incomes. So In fact, today, this situation will not be changed by the creation of “organic Jewish communities”. It is therefore essential, if synagogues wish to attract and retain poor and lower middle class Jews, that they probe further the reasons why, in Kaplanâs words, we âtend to associate with people of the same social and economic status as [our] own.â
I gained some insight into this question when I served on a synagogue board while I was in graduate school and my wife was a part-time elementary school teacher and a student herself. At one of the meetings, the board discussed a proposal to celebrate a milestone in the rabbiâs relationship to the congregation by holding a dinner that would cost $50 per person (equal to about $79 today ). I argued against the proposal because it would keep away members who could not afford the cost, but my words did not convince enough people, and the proposal passed. Most board members agreed with the person who argued that âeveryone spends $100 per couple when they go out to dinnerâ so there was nothing to be concerned about here. At the time, my wife and I had never spent that much money on one evening and we, along with several membersâincluding many regular synagogue-goersâdid not attend this celebration.
If we want our synagogues to attract and retain people with lower incomes, we need to take their financial realities into consideration always, and not only when we set our synagogue dues. All day long, people facing financial challenges see things that they cannot afford. Do we want our synagogues to add to this experience? And if we want our synagogues âto help foster better social and ethical attitudes,â we need to talk more openly about the economic disparities that exist in our congregations. Wealthy, middle class, lower middle class, and poor Jews can see each other at Sabbath kiddushim, Chanukkah parties, and multiple other communal events but generally will not gain any knowledge of the challenges that each face because of their financial position. Most synagogues do not help members avoid superficial stereotypes of the â1%,â nor do they help us see how good people fall into poverty. This is a significant missed opportunity for, even today, synagogues are more economically diverse than many other institutions that Jews participate in. Unmasking and engaging with financial diversity would strengthen our connections to each other and make us more likely to support one another, and could motivate us to give more time and money to pressing social causes.
I look forward to reading your thoughts on this passage from Kaplan, my response to it, or both.
with Rabbis Michael Cohen, Barbara Penzner, Gail Shuster-Bouskila, Dennis Sasso, and Dr. Shlomi Ravid
April 23, 2023
https://vimeo.com/820522319?share=copy
Webinar Panelists
Rabbi Michael Margaretten Cohen is a faculty member of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Bennington College. He teaches courses on conflict resolution, the Bible, and the environment. Rabbi Cohen has been a Policy Advisor to the Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, U.S. Department of State and a Speechwriter Adviser to the Office of the White House Speechwriters. He was recently named to the Advisory Board of the Partnership Peace of USAID established by Congress. Cohen, the rabbi emeritus of the Israel Congregation in Manchester Center, Vermont is the author of numerous articles that have appeared in the Middle East and the United States. He has a monthly commentary of the Torah reading of the week in the Jerusalem Post as well as a regular column in the Jerusalem Post called Letter from America. He is the author of âEinsteinâs Rabbi: A Tale of Science and the Soul.â Cohen co-founded of the Green Zionist Alliance. Cohen serves on the Board of Trustees of the Burr & Burton Academy, the Mount Equinox Preservation Trust, the Green Sabbath Project, KaTO Architecture, Shomrei Breishit: Rabbis and Cantors for the Earth, and the Jerusalem Peacebuilders. He is a recipient of the Eliav Sartawi Award for Middle East Journalism from the Search for Common Ground.
Rabbi Barbara Penzner has served Reconstructionist Temple Hillel B’nai Torah in Boston since 1995. Prior to coming to HBT, she lived in Israel from 1993-1995 as a Jerusalem Fellow. From that experience, she wrote the article, “Kaplan’s New Zionism Comes of Age,” published in The Reconstructionist Journal in 1995. She has served the Reconstructionist Movement as RRA President, Chair of several RRA Committees, and co-chair of various Commissions. She currently co-chairs the Joint Placement Commission.
Rabbi Gail Shuster-Bouskila has earned two degrees in education. She finished her rabbinic studies requirements at Hebrew University and was ordained at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia in 1979. She is the first woman rabbi in Israel.
Since making Aliyah in 1978, she has been a free-lance rabbi. She has counseled many people on life cycle events, including womenâs issues, marriage and Bar/Bat Mitzvah and has lectured around Israel about modern Midrash, liberal Judaism, women’s issues and the philosophy of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan. Her midrashim on the weekly Torah portions are on her website https://midrash-harabah.org/.
She retired from the Academic English department of the Open University of Israel in 2017, but still tutors students with Learning Disabilities to complete their English Language requirement.
Dr. Dennis C. Sasso has been Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beth-El Zedeck since 1977. A native of the Republic of Panama, Rabbi Sasso descends from Spanish/Portuguese Sephardic families who settled in the Caribbean following the discovery of the Americas.
Rabbi Sasso obtained his B.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, an M.A. in Religion from Temple University, and was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1974. He holds a Doctorate of Ministry in Theology from Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana where he is Affiliate Professor of Jewish Studies. He is the recipient of various Doctor of Divinity Honorary degrees.
He and Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, the first woman ordained by the Reconstructionist Movement, are the first rabbinical couple in world Jewish history. Rabbi Sasso has served on many boards including the Indiana Board of Rabbis, the Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis, United Way of Central Indiana, the Immigrant Welcome Center, Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School Board of Trustees and the Lake Family Institute Advisory Board.
In 2022 he and his wife, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, were designated Indiana Living Legends by the Indiana Historical Society and were listed among the top 250 influential leaders in Indiana. He is a recipient of the âInterfaith Ambassador of the Yearâ award (along with Sandy Eisenberg Sasso) from the Center for Interfaith Cooperation and the Sagamore of the Wabash for Distinguished Citizen Award from the Governor of the State of Indiana.
He and Sandy have a son, David (Naomi) and a daughter, Debora (Brad). They have four grandchildren, Darwin, Ari, Levi and Raven.
Dr. Shlomi Ravid has been a pioneer in developing Peoplehood education. In his 35 years of involvement in Jewish Global affairs he was the founding director of the Israel Center of San Francisco, the founding director of the International School for Jewish Peoplehood Studies at Beit Hatfutsot, and the founder of the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education. During his term in San Francisco Shlomi founded with the Helen Diller Family Foundation, the Diller Teen Fellows program.
Shlomi initiated in 2008 and edits thePeoplehood Papers. He has published over forty articles and studies on Jewish Peoplehood and led the creation of the Peoplehood Education Toolkit. He is currently on faculty at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership.
Shlomi is a member of Kibbutz Glil-Yam where he was born, married to Linda (originally from San Francisco) and considers his four children as his biggest contribution to humanity. His PhD in Philosophy from Tel Aviv University explored the relations between norms and values and examined the changing Kibbutz as a case study. His current academic focus is community and Jewish Peoplehood.
Many thanks to Mark and Margie Zivin, and Rabbi Gail Shuster-Bouskila for sponsoring this webinar!
Selections from A New Zionism by Mordecai Kaplan:
Introduction Zionism has been defined as âthat movement in Jewish life which seeks to foster a capacity among Jews for the living of a more abundant Jewish life.â So far that concept of Zionism has not even reached the talking stage. If it is ever to reach the action stage, we have to begin thinking and talking about the conception as soon as possible. To live a more abundant Jewish life, whether in Israel or outside, Jews will have to foster a form of religion which will be relevant both to the past career of the Jewish people and to the spiritual needs and world outlook of modern man. It will have to be a religion free from creedal and clerical authoritarianism, and able to meet the moral and spiritual needs of our day.
Concluding Paragraph of Volume Zionism can emerge from its present crisis strengthened by the experience of challenge and danger. It can lead to the fulfillment of the prophecy that âfrom Zion shall go forth the Torah.â But before the Torah can go forth from Zion, it will have to enter into Zionism.
The intention of Night of Beginnings is to do more than âupdateâ the traditional liturgy, to do more than make it consonant with contemporary thinking and sensibilities. This haggadah is an attempt to go beyond these aims to reveal meanings beneath the surface of the Pesach ritual and to deepen our personal connections to the holiday.
The new bârakhot express a theology that differs distinctly from that of the traditional rabbinic blessings as well as from that of the Bible story. They envision the divineâthe ineffable, the sacredâas a greater whole of which we are an inseparable part. They convey this vision with imagesânew metaphors, such as eyn haáž„ayim (wellspring of life) and maâyan áž„ayĂ©ynu (flow of our lives)âthat replace the depiction of God as a lord and king. These new metaphors are neither anthropomorphic (not male and not female) nor abstract, but drawn largely from the natural world. Their inclusive language makes room for women to find and use our voices more full-throatedly than we were able to do with the patriarchal prayers we inherited from the early rabbis.
