• Kaplan and Israel: A New, New Zionism

    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 ā€œEinstein’s Rabbi: A Tale of Science and the Soul.ā€  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 women’s 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 ā€œInterfaith Ambassador of the Yearā€ 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 the Peoplehood 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 ā€œthat movement in Jewish life which seeks to foster a capacity among Jews for the living of a more abundant Jewish life.ā€ 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 ā€œfrom Zion shall go forth the Torah.ā€ But before the Torah can go forth from Zion, it will have to enter into Zionism.
  • Night of Beginnings


    The Mordecai M. Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood is proud to have underwritten the production costs of Marcia Falk’s new haggadah, Night of Beginnings. In the essay below—excerpted from the Introduction to that haggadah—Falk presents her goals in writing the haggadah and surveys its unique features
    .

    Book cover with flowering branch and text "Night of Beginnings: A Passover Haggadah" in English and HebrewThe intention of Night of Beginnings is to do more than ā€œupdateā€ 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 ā€œtelling,ā€ the standard haggadah does not actually tell the Exodus story—in fact, it does not offer a continuous narrative at all. Instead, it provides tastings—rabbinic anecdotes, comments, and exhortations, punctuated with biblical quotations—that 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 festival’s meaning.

    In recounting the full Bible story, Night of Beginnings seeks to provide a more direct connection to the origins of the holiday. ā€œMaggid: The Tellingā€ā€” which is not only the centerpiece of this haggadah but one of its three main innovative elements—offers a compressed version of the Exodus narrative, beginning with the Israelites’ 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 story’s main human protagonists, ā€œMaggid: The Tellingā€ includes the voices and actions not just of Moshe and his brother, Aaron, but of the female characters, among them Moshe’s mother; his sister, Miriam; Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopts the baby Moshe; and the midwives Shifrah and Pu’ah, 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 ā€œMaggid: The Telling,ā€ Night of Beginnings offers two other major innovations: new b’rakhot (plural of b’rakhah, 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.

    Smiling woman with gray hair, wearing a black shirt and colorful scarfThe new b’rakhot 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 divine—the ineffable, the sacred—as a greater whole of which we are an inseparable part. They convey this vision with images—new metaphors, such as eyn haįø„ayim (wellspring of life) and ma’yan įø„ayĆ©ynu (flow of our lives)—that 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.

    In addition to offering new imagery, the b’rakhot differ from rabbinic prayer in their mode of address: rather than passively acknowledging a ā€œblessed You,ā€ they open with inclusive, active verbs, such as n’varekh (let us bless) and nodeh (let us thank), calling upon us, the human community, to perform the act of blessing. Some of the b’rakhot open directly with an image, leaving the invocation implied. Each b’rakhah is introduced with a quotation from Tanakh, linking it to our most ancient texts. All the b’rakhot 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. B’rakhot 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 b’rakhot, and we might think of them as the seder’s heart. If the b’rakhot are short lyric poems that touch down lightly on single moments—the lighting of candles, the eating of matzah—the 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.

    Interspersed among the three main innovative elements of this haggadah—the b’rakhot, the kavanot, and the Maggid—are several kinds of embellishments: poems, psalms, and songs, as well as traditional readings that are usually sung, including Arba Hakushyot (the Four Questions), Sh’faįø„ot Va’avadim HayĆ­nu (Once We Were Slaves), Ha Laįø„ma Anya (This Is the Bread of Affliction), B’khol Dor Vador (In Every Generation), and DayĆ©nu (It Would Have Been Enough). All of these readings, with the exception of DayĆ©nu, have been adapted to make them more inclusive. The traditional songs that follow the seder proper have, like DayĆ©nu, been left unaltered for the sake of maintaining their ā€œsingability.ā€ In the words of Rabbi Ira Eisenstein z”l, we sing these ā€œas quotation rather than affirmation.ā€ Some of the traditional readings have been moved from their usual places in the haggadah; rather than being scattered throughout, they are clustered in two sections that frame the Maggid: ā€œBefore the Maggid: Preparing to Listenā€ and ā€œAfter the Maggid: Celebrating the Story.ā€ These modifications to the structure of the standard haggadah lend coherence to what has felt, to many people, like a less-than-unified creation.

    Underlying many aspects of Night of Beginnings is the motif of hiddenness-and-uncovering. In ā€œMaggid: The Telling,ā€ 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 name—Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (I Am That I Am)—to 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 afikoman—essential for concluding the seder—is found.

    In an essay entitled ā€œRevealment and Concealment in Language,ā€ 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 poetry—with b’rakhot 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 poet’s Passover, and as we read aloud from it, we all partake in poetry’s 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-awareness—being revealed to oneself—is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for freedom. The less one is hidden from oneself, the greater one’s potential for self-actualization, the fruit of a freely chosen life. And the greater one’s freedom, the better one’s 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 one’s awareness of the needs of others—the first step in the journey out of the wilderness.

  • What We Mean by Religion

    What We Mean by Religion

    Rabbi Richard Hirsh’s 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 Kaplan’s 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 ā€œGod is the Power That Makes for Salvationā€ with reference to Shabbat.

    Where Eisenstein’s earlier book, Creative Judaism, was written for adults as a simplified version of Judaism As a CivilizationWhat We Mean By Religion  was written for ā€œthe younger generation of Jews,ā€ with the hope that by reading it, ā€œthey would not brush aside Jewish religion with impatience,ā€ or feel ā€œthey must accept beliefs against which their reason rebelled.ā€ 

    Put differently, What We Mean By Religion seems to have been aimed at Jews of B’nei 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 Kaplan’s 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 ā€œthe Power thatā€¦ā€ than on a humanistic extraction of key ideas from each of the Jewish holidays. Each chapter includes discussion questions aimed at teenagers. Rabbi Eisenstein’s goal was to translate the ā€œJudaism saysā€ that so many Jewish teens grew up with into questions: ā€œwhat does Judaism have to say about the issues of life that you experience every day?ā€ 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: ā€œHow has [this book] changed your views about religion? What old ideas did you learn to discard? What new ones did you acquire?ā€ 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.

  • Cedarbaum Prize Evaluative Criteria

    Categories of Criteria3 – Superior2 – Average1–Doesn’t meet standard
    Explanation of the Innovation 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 – under Inspired InnovationBreakthrough approach or new paradigm.Incremental improvement or new practice or toolStandard approach
    Feasibility & Risk under Support ImplementationIs 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.

  • Eric’s Forum Archive 9-24-19

    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 Kaplan’s 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 month’s selection is taken fromĀ Questions Jews Ask: Reconstructionist Answers. ThisĀ book was published by the Reconstructionist Press in 1956 and gathers together many of the ā€œKnow how to Answerā€ columns that Kaplan wrote forĀ TheĀ ReconstructionistĀ 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 noteĀ cards because he believed that this both led to clearer questions and encouraged them to formulate their thoughts as a question.)Ā The book divides the columns thematically—Jewish peoplehood, God, ritual etc.—and each section begins with a significant article published inĀ TheĀ Reconstructionistthat challenged Kaplan’s 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 KaplanĀ reading his answers to many of these questions (unfortunately, the question below is not one of them).

    Questions Jews AskĀ 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 diaspora—but 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 congregation’s 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,Ā Are Voluntary Dues Right for Your Synagogue?,Ā 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 leadĀ 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 Center’s 2013Ā 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,Ā but 56% have earnings below $50,000. In other words, North American Jews, in general, are an exceptionally wealthy community, and when we gatherĀ 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 Kaplan’s words, we ā€œtend to associate with people of the same social and economic status as [our] own.ā€

    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 rabbi’s 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 ā€œeveryone spends $100 per couple when they go out to dinnerā€ 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 members—including many regular synagogue-goers—did 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 ā€œto help foster better social and ethical attitudes,ā€ 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 SabbathĀ 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 ā€œ1%,ā€ 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,Ā my response to it, or both.

    Eric Caplan can be reached atĀ eric@kaplancenter.org.

  • Board of Directors

  • Georgetown Conference (2014)

    https://vimeo.com/790702022
    https://vimeo.com/790708366
    https://vimeo.com/790757951
    https://vimeo.com/790786708
    https://vimeo.com/790806070
    https://vimeo.com/790814453
    https://vimeo.com/790832091
    https://vimeo.com/790841331
    https://vimeo.com/790861393
  • God and the Digital Age

    Text Me, and a Powerful Poem

    Later this summer the volume Text Me: Ancient Jewish Wisdom Meets Contemporary Technology (Jewish Resources for Understanding, Embracing, and Challenging our Evolving Digital Identity) will be published by Hamilton Press.  I have shared with readers of the Kaplan Center website in an earlier column the ways in which the project seems to me to be quintessentially Kaplanian.  Creatively living in two civilizations demands an ongoing, mutually critical dialogue between our Jewish values and our everyday lives, which are increasingly digital lives.

    Now I would like to offer a ta’am/taste of the volume in the form of a poem offered as commentary by Dr. Adina Newberg to a chapter on Jewish and human identity in the digital age. It is traditionally our privilege in the period between Pesach and Shavuot to explore Pirkei Avot, the section of the Mishna containing foundational sayings of our ancestors.   One of the most profound ideas that we find in Pirkei Avot is the assertion that God’s great gift to us is having not only made us in God’s image, but also having given us the awareness of being made in God’s image.  Presumably this self-awareness adds to our own agency in creating different understandings of what it means to be made b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.

    So, unsurprisingly, the very concept of b’tzelem Elohim means different things to different Jewish thinkers.  For Maimonides it is clearly anchored in the intellect.  For Ramban it refers to our soul.  For Rabbi Meir Simcha Cohen of Dvinsk it is our free will.  For Martin Buber it is a process of self-actualization, perfecting the capacities within us in a divine way.  And for Mordecai Kaplan, in addition to the theological function of underscoring the dignity of each individual, the concept aligns with the phrase from the Aleynul’takein olam b’malchut Shadai —the Godly power we have been granted allows us to transform the world into a more Godly place.

    In the digital age another unique twist is added.  The confluence of technology and b’tzelem Elohim comes forth in a challenging poem, titled ā€œInstalling You My Lord,ā€ by Admiel Kosman, a poet, Talmudist, and professor of literature.  In the poem, the human communicates with the Divine one, but ironically the human is the one ā€œinstallingā€ the Divine, like one installs a computer program.  Is the speaker creating the God he is talking to?  Have we come up with a unique new take on the High Holiday notion that we enthrone God?   Do we also create the God we enthrone?

    Here is the first stanza of the poem:

    Installing You my Lord, in the middle of the night.
    Installing You and all Your programs. Up and down
    the night goes, in my Windows, slows, installing You and
    the kruvim, installing you and the srafim, installing all
    the holy crew, until the morning
    come.

    [Ā© 2007, Admiel Kosman.  From: Alternative Prayerbook Publisher: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv, 2007.  Translation Ā© 2011, Lisa Katz and Shlomit Naim-Naor.  From: Approaching You in English, Zephyr, Brookline, MA 2011.  Translator’s Note: One of a series of poems by Kosman in which he transliterates English into Hebrew letters. Kruvim = cherubim and srafim = seraphim.]

    The poem fills me with curiosity and wonder.  We know God wanted our partnership, but did God give us even the power to reshape God’s identity?  Did God want to be created in this particular way?  Why is the evening the most interesting time for such human installation of the Divine?  Isn’t that the time when we were in repose from the day’s labors?  What are the digital equivalents of cherubim and seraphim who serve as ā€œconnectorsā€ or hyperlinks between the Divine and human worlds?  And if God runs the program once installed, what happens to the role of the humans who installed God?

    What questions does the poem raise for you, the reader?  We hope that many of your questions are explored in the new volume.  We will provide a link to that volume later in the summer.

    Please feel free to contact Jeffrey Schein with questions or comments, at jeffrey@kaplancenter.org.

  • Tu b’Shevat – Judaism and the Environment

    with Rabbis Michael Cohen and Fred Scherlinder Dobb
    February 9, 2025

    Environmental activism from the personal to the communal: two extraordinary voices speak about Kaplan, their own tikkun olam, and how awareness of the fragility of the earth has shaped their actions, careers and voices.

    https://vimeo.com/1055025449?share=copy

    Rabbi Michael 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. He has worked for the Arava Institute since its doors opened in 1996 while on sabbatical from his congregation in Vermont. Since then, he has divided his time between Vermont and the Kibbutz Ketura campus of the Institute. He also works for the Friends of the Arava Institute. 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 sits on the Advisory Board of the Middle East Peace Partnership (MEPPA) and the Board of Trustees of the Mount Equinox Preservation Trust and co-founded the Green Zionist Alliance. Rabbi Cohen is an active member of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP). He is a regular contributor to the Jerusalem Post.


    Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb is Rabbinic Advisor for the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL.org), and an eco-Jewish troubadour. After nearly three decades serving Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda MD (AdatShalom.net), he is now their Rabbi Emeritus; he’s also visiting interim rabbi for Temple B’nai Israel of Easton MD, and High Holy Day rabbi for the Jewish Community of Kauai, HI. Fred writes, speaks, educates, motivates, and consults around climate justice, often with a focus on Eco-Mussar (and he’d happily be in touch about visiting, virtually, and/or for shabbatonim). A contributor to Moment, past president of the Washington Board of Rabbis, and a Wexner Graduate Fellow, Fred’s top volunteer commitment is as national board member of IPL, InterfaithPowerAndLight.org. Together with Minna Scherlinder Morse, his pride and joy and key projects are Gilad Martin (10th grade) and Sara Penina (sophomore at Spelman); they live in DC.

  • Living in Multiple Civilizations in 2024

    The notion of living in two civilizations is rapidly being eclipsed in the 21st century by the notion of living in multiple civilizations, among them digital, global, multi-cultural, and multi-gender orientations.


    From Earl Schwartz


    Historical and Cultural Perspectives
    Kwame Anthony Appiah’s work on identity, The Ethics of Identity, (in which he references Kaplan) is a very thoughtful commentary on these issues. Appiah’s analysis of social identities ultimately leads to an extended discussion of ā€œrooted cosmopolitanism,ā€ which draws on his own experience of being heir to and shaped by multiple identities. He concludes that to reduce the complexities of identity, in oneself and others, is to reduce the person. In this spirit, he ends the book with a proverb from his father’s Asante tradition, rendering a key word in Greek: ā€œIn a single πολις [polis] there is no wisdom.ā€ How does ā€œrooted cosmopolitanismā€ compare with ā€œThe American Jew will not be fifty percent Jew and fifty percent American, but 100 percent of each, for he will have achieved a synthesis in his own personality of whatever is valid in both the Jewish and American civilizationsā€?
    Kaplan maintained that the improbable survival of the Jewish People, despite repeated encounters with dominating civilizations, should be understood in light of our having sustained a critical degree of devotion to principles that transcend survival for its own sake. The United States has long claimed a similar legacy – a nation, as Lincoln put it, born in liberation, and dedicated to an ethical proposition. How to engage this supersessional aspect of the American self-image from Kaplan’s perspective? Joseph Epes Brown characterized ā€œthe progressive weakening and occasional total lossā€ of language as ā€œperhaps the greatest tragedyā€ to befall a people emmeshed in a dominant society. The waning significance of Hebrew among American and Canadian Jews would seem both a symptom and a source of this tragedy – but Epes Brown’s observation comes from his Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian. Sometimes, perhaps, we find it easier to recognize and acknowledge this tragedy among other peoples than we do among ourselves.

    From Rabbi Sid Schwarz


    Generational Considerations
    I was quite enamored of Kaplan’s two-civilization concept when I was in my 20’s. It spoke to me very differently than it does now. My waning enthusiasm for the idea is a combination of how I have changed and how America has changed. I now see Kaplan’s argument as part of a line of thinking that was widespread in Jewish intellectual circles in the early 20th century to make an intellectual argument to justify why Jews belonged in America. There was a lot of that around. I often have quipped that the leaders of that school of thought were the KKKs: Mordecai Kaplan, Horace Kallen, and Milton Konvitz. There were others, of course. The argument was generational. It spoke well to my parent’s generation. They were both immigrants and the Jews who came to America had the same insecurities about their ā€œplaceā€ here, similar to immigrants of all faiths and ethnicities who shared that experience. Even early in my rabbinate, I did not find the audiences I spoke to all that impressed by Kaplan’s argument. By the 1980’s, when I began my rabbinate, Jews were already quite comfortable with their place in America.
    In Chapter One of my book, Judaism and Justice, I offer a very different take on the two-civilization idea. I argue that in an America that has done such a poor job of inculcating noble and ethical values to its citizens (which is even more abundantly clear today than when I wrote the book), we need to argue for a ā€œJudaism as counter-culturalā€ to what America is. I offer a fuller case for this in the book.
    A document about a future vision for the Reconstructionist movement made little mention of theology. At a time when the differences between the various streams of non-Orthodox Judaism are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish, it is an enormous mistake to avoid speaking about the non-supernatural/religious humanist approach to theology that is at the very core of Kaplan’s teachings.

    From Rabbi Gail Shuster Bouskila

    An Israel Perspective
    Listening to the presentations and the reactions to them made me realize that I am STILL living in multiple civilizations in Israel. I will always be a Jew of multiple identities – an American, and of course a Reconstructionist. But now I am part of a minority group here: Liberal, non-Orthodox Israelis.

    Here is the article which triggered this Talmud Dialogue by Dr. Jeffrey Schein


    Tosafot (additional commentaries) by Rabbi William Plevan and Dr. Mel Scult 

    Rabbi William Plevan, Reconstructionist Rabbinical CollegeĀ 
    Mordecai Kaplan and Stephen Breyer on Jewish Law

    In his new book, ā€œReading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism,ā€ former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer explains why favors the pragmatist tradition in legal thought in contrast to the conservative approach to jurisprudence known as textualism or originalism. Breyer’s invocation of pragmatism calls to mind the work of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the pioneering rabbi, educator, and theologian. In particular, Breyer’s book offers an opportunity to consider what seems to be a neglected element of Kaplan’s own project, namely the revival of democratically shaped Jewish law as a living social reality in Jewish communities. 

    After a brief summary of Breyer’s argument, I’ll discuss how it might illuminate Kaplan’s distinctive approach to Jewish law. 

    While Ruth Bader Ginsburg may be the most iconic of the liberal Supreme Court Justices of the past three decades, it is Breyer, the author of many books on jurisprudence, who became the court’s leading legal philosopher. In this work, he presents his approach to legal interpretation through a detailed discussion of Supreme Court cases where the differences between justices in deciding the case reflect the philosophical differences between pragmatism and textualism. For Breyer, pragmatism involves a commitment to a purpose-orientated approach to law, which means considering the general purposes of a particular law or Constitutional clause when engaging in textual interpretation. How a law should be applied depends, on this view, on what Congress or the Constitution’s framers intended to achieve. Textualists, most notably conservative jurists such as Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, insist that this purpose-oriented approach is subject to vagueness and open-endedness. To interpret law with attention to purpose gives the judge, the claim goes, with too much power to determine the meaning of law.

    The term pragmatism is often used to mean ā€œexpedient;ā€ someone pragmatic is willing to compromise, perhaps even their values, to achieve some goal or success. This is not what the term means in legal interpretation (or in philosophy for that matter, but that’s another story). 

    Breyer’s defense of judicial pragmatism insists that taking into account the purpose of the law is the way to ensure both the legislative intent and the democratic underpinnings of the legal system. In this respect, he stands in a long tradition of legal pragmatism that goes back to Oliver Wendel Holmes, the jurist and scholar who served on the Supreme Court in from 1902-1932. As Breyer notes, Holmes decried the excessive use of logic in judicial reasoning and instead favored the use of ā€œjudicial instinct,ā€ by which he meant the jurist’s experience-based wisdom of with how the law (or some particular law) functions in real life and how legislative or Constitutional language could mean different things in different contexts. This kind of flexibility and attention to real-life problem solving is at the heart of what Breyer means by pragmatism. In Breyer’s vision, the purpose of law is to bind the people together in a democratic process that resolves real-life problems fairly and peacefully. The function of the Constitution is to make democratic deliberation possible to produce such laws. Therefore, he argues, jurists need to keep these broader goals of Constitutional norms in mind when deciding how to interpret them. The problem with originalism is that it largely keeps, and insists on keeping, these broader aims out of view when engaging in judicial interpretation.

    In his own approach to Jewish practice and Jewish communal life, Mordecai Kaplan was very much a pragmatist in Breyer’s sense. Indeed, reading his work led me to wonder whether the pragmatist legal tradition exemplified by Oliver Wendel Holmes was a more appropriate way to place Kaplan in that tradition than the work of James and Dewey. We know that Kaplan placed a great emphasis on the purpose of Jewish practice in determining its value and legitimacy. Likewise, Kaplan viewed the purpose of Jewish practice as maintaining the national character of the Jewish people, whether in the land or in exile. In modern age, he believed it was ā€œnecessary to stress the ethical and spiritual consequencesā€1 of Jewish ideas, values, and practices in order to maintain their vitality. 

    Kaplan’s designation of Jewish spiritual practice as folkways is well known, as is his adage that halakha should have a vote, not a veto. What gets less attention is Kaplan’s quite ambitious hope for a new role for the term ā€œJewish Lawā€ as a form of sub-governmental communal governance of the American Jewish community. Kaplan outlines this program in The Future of the American Jew, published in 19482. There he outlines the way Jewish law (classical halakha) had functioned at least putatively to govern Jewish life. He argues that Jewish law should have three primary domains: family relations (i.e. marriage and divorce); the governance of communal organizations; and ritual practice. In this framework, Kaplan imagines that the community would exercise authority over communal membership (presumably conversion as well as membership standards) and the qualifications and regulations for secular and religious communal leaders.

    The influence of the American legal tradition on Kaplan is evident in his use of the term ā€œconstitutional lawā€ to refer to the basic covenant that would establish this communal governance structure. Such a constitution is necessitated by the fact that this modern form of Jewish community is democratic and voluntaristic. Here then, Kaplan very much sits within the American tradition of legal pragmatism in that he thinks of law as serving the needs and the will of the people. While classical halakha relied on interpretation of authoritative sources for its development, Kaplan insisted that new Jewish law would need a legislate mechanism of some kind3. Every Jew in the community would be guaranteed a voice in shaping this legislative process. Thus, like Breyer, Kaplan views the purpose of a constitution as providing the means for a people to live democratically.

    Kaplan does not eliminate religious language from his account of this modern form of Jewish law. Indeed, he states unequivocally that ā€œthe law in a democratic polity derives its ultimate validity from the extent to which it conforms with the divine will, by actually contributing to the salvation of the individual and of human society generally4.ā€ Such talk of the divine will seems to strike us as anti-liberal, but Kaplan’s intention in that section is quite clear. He understands God’s will to be found in the self-actualization of every individual person in a society, which requires that all individuals be able to participate in shaping that society. In other words, striving to achieve a democratic polity is itself the work of doing the divine will.


    Dr. Mel Scult’s CommentaryĀ 
    Additional Thoughts on Kaplan and Pragmatism

    First off, yes of course Kaplan is known as a pragmatist. He often uses this term and more often prefers to call himself a functionalist. Judaism must function in the life of the individual and the group and if it doesn’t function we need to change it so that it does.

    I think Kaplan’s attitude toward the law which is the center of your note is ambivalent; he sostands on both sides of an issue. He talks both negatively and positively of the law i.e. the halacha. Most importantly he said that there should be flexibility when it comes to ritual but not when it comes to the ethical. In other words, the ethical is always paramount. I think the ethical is what Justice Breyer means when talks of the purpose of the law as relating to the will of the people, although that phrase may be interpreted in many ways.

    With reference to pragmatism, I think Kaplan, although he read James at an early point in his career, did not quite realize the inherent flexibility of approaching religion in a pragmatic way. Pragmatism considers ideas as tools we invent to help us cope. They are not out there waiting to be discovered, but our provisional responses to particular situations. This is quite a radical way to go even for Kaplan.

    Plevan, who I have known for a long time, and whom I greatly respect as a Kaplan scholar, refers to Justice Holmes. Kaplan respected Holmes’ pragmatism although it is well to remember that Holmes was quite extreme. Because Kaplan read Holmes, I have read Holmes. He is really attractive in many ways. I am most impressed with his conception of truth. He defines truth as ā€œwhat he can’t help believingā€ and then he goes on to say that he is well aware that his ā€œcan’t helpsā€ are not necessarily other’s ā€œcan’t helpsā€ or even ā€œcosmic can’t helps.ā€  Would MMK be willing to go that far?

    Kaplan often referred to the issue of what makes life worthwhile as the most fundamental question that we confront. Here is a comment from Justice Holmes on just that issue and the matter of civilization which was of course central to the Kaplanian schema.  I am quoting it fully because it is so valuable.

    “The joy, the duty, and I venture to add, the end of life, I speak only of this world, of course, and of the teachings of this world. But from the point of view of the world, the end of life is life.  Life is action and the use of  one’s powers. And to use them to their height is our joy and duty. Until lately the best thing I was able to think in favor of civilization, apart from blind acceptance of the order of the universe, was that it made possible the artist, the poet, the philosopher, and the man of science…

    Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have enough of it.”

    1. Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization, 386.Ā 
      ā†©ļøŽ
    2. See Kaplan, ā€œThe Problem of Jewish Lawā€ in The Future of the American Jew, 387-401. ā†©ļøŽ
    3. Kaplan, The Future of the American Jew, 397. ā†©ļøŽ
    4. Ibid. ā†©ļøŽ