by Rabbi Toba Spitzer In The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion (published in 1937), in the chapter on Chanukah, Mordecai Kaplan reflected on Jewish survival in the face of competing cultures. He wrote: “Paradoxical as it may seem, if a nation wishes to survive, it must not make survival itself its supreme objective, […]
by Dr. Mel Scult Peter Beinart in the Sunday Opinion section of the New York Times, was his usual brilliant self. But in this case he happens to be wrong. He would have us believe that the liberals on the left who have traditionally identified strongly with Israel have no place to go. He would […]
Joseph Reimer In my recent book, Making Shabbat, I tell the story of the Schoolmans, founders of Cejwin Camp. There were Jewish camps before Cejwin, but the Schoolmans created the first intentional Jewish camp: a space for campers and staff to actively engage their Judaism. The Schoolmans were disciples of Mordechai Kaplan. Intentional Jewish camping […]
As we prepare to begin our reading of the Book of Exodus at a time of war and conflict these two reflections by Mel Scult on Kaplan’s views of might and right seem particularly contemporary. From Mordecai Kaplan: What can be plainer than that the following indicates what the Exodus meant to Israel: “And for […]
Personal Prelude Like many of our readers, I struggle to make sense of the events occurring on and after October 7th. Perspective is almost impossible to gain. I wake up daily hoping to hear that all the captives of Zion have been returned. I try to make sense of the absolute evil that came with […]
‘Man is not free to choose between having or not having ideals, but he is free to choose between different kinds of ideals….” – Erich Fromm
In this summer of noisily clashing ideologies in the background, a group of rabbis met quietly in Jerusalem to honor the memory of Reconstructionist Rabbi Jack Cohen, one of Kaplan’s most significant disciples and the founder of Kehillah Mevakshei Derekh in Jerusalem, a congregation devoted to Kaplanian principles. The event also anticipated the coming 90th anniversary of the publication of Kaplan’s revolutionary and evolutionary Judaism as a Civilization.
The Kaplan Center held a day of learning on the importance of Mordecai Kaplan’s teachings for Israeli society today. Not coincidentally, it was held at Cohen’s former synagogue, Mevakshei Derech. The several dozen participants included Reconstructionist rabbis attending the Hartman Rabbinical Institute, rabbinical students who are in Israel for the summer, and Reconstructionist rabbis who live here in Israel. Also joining the dialogue were eight members of the congregation. The richness of perspectives of future rabbis evolving their views of Zionism, Reconstructionist rabbis who lived out their commitment to Zionism by making aliya , and Israelis whose commitment to Zionism included liberal Judaism and democracy gave texture to the day and made it multi-vocal.
Leaving outside the inescapable clamor in the streets for D-E-M-O-C-R-A-C-Y, participants’ short presentations and discussion focused on Kaplan’s belief in democracy, deftly moderated by Rabbi Dr. Jeffrey Schein, the executive director and senior education consultant of the Kaplan Center and organizer of the event.
Kaplan and democracy
Mordecai Kaplan was a devoted believer in democracy. “The Reconstructionists looked to democracy not only because it was the way of the land, but also because they invested democracy with the belief that it emerged from and pointed toward universal truths. In their view, democracy was the closest moderns could get to revelation in an age of relativism, multi-vocality and pluralism. They ultimately asserted that it was the next great stage shaping the evolution of Jewish civilization,” wrote Rabbi Dr. Deborah Waxman, president at Reconstructing Judaism.
Rabbi Jeffrey Schein & Sarah Kallai (Jack Cohen’s niece)
But as the Reconstructionist view was evolving during the 1930s, the greatest threat to democracy, and to the Jews, by Germany, was gathering force toward the outbreak of the world war.
In 1939, Kaplan was living in Jerusalem, teaching at the Hebrew University’s education department, when the British Mandatory government issued the infamous White Paper restricting Jewish immigration to only 75,000, a fraction of those fleeing the spread of Nazi totalitarianism.
While the leaders of the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish population, struggled against the edict, Kaplan took a characteristically philosophic view, based on his belief that Jewish existence itself relies on a system whose fundamental pillars are reason and the rights of the individual. He taught that the sanctity of the individual, every individual, is the essence of democracy.
“The minority status to which Jews seem to be condemned is the opportunity which the Jews must exploit to affirm the right of the human being to be something else besides being a creature of the herd, to be himself. This human dignity, which has fallen upon the Jew to defend, is what the Jew should live for himself as a Jew,” Kaplan wrote in 1939.
Education is critical in inculcating democratic values, and so it is a major priority of the Reconstructionist movement, whose embrace of the liberal values of diversity and individual freedom is antithetical to totalitarianism, the imposition of a single, uniform standard that does not tolerate diversity.
At this point in the discussion, Kaplan’s response to the growing threat of totalitarianism in 1939 suddenly became eerily prescient of the ongoing political crisis in Israel. He called the looming threat to democracy mobocracy – his name for fascism.
There are “two factors which have contributed to the rise of mobocracy,” Kaplan wrote, “the stupendous machinery of communication which unites millions into a seething sea of human emotion and the failure of democracy to make good its promise of bringing special privilege under control.”
He identifies the means mobocracy utilizes to gain and maintain power as xenophobia, chauvinism, and ignorance of the law – elements of which were daily visible among the hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the streets demonstrating for and against restricting the power of the Supreme Court to exercise judicial review.
In the case of xenophobia, Kaplan writes: “The rulers in a mobocracy know that they can gain control of the masses by instilling in them hates and fears of some common enemy, who has to be augmented to gigantic proportions if he is comparatively insignificant and harmless, and who has to be invented if he is nonexistent.” Chauvinism is employed by the mobocratic ruler to arouse megalomania “in their own people or class” – or political party? – by a deluge of propaganda.
Last of all, Kaplan states that the ruler of a mobocracy depends on the ignorance of his followers of how democracy functions upon “the exercise of reason and is based on a conscious regard for justice.”
Mel Scult, Kaplan’s pre-eminent biographer, wrote that “Kaplan had great regard for the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, whose quote above differentiates between different kinds of ideals – those that center on power and those that center on reason. For Kaplan, ideals were the essence of his view of religion and of his theology.”
Fromm frequently reiterated: : “Man is not free to choose between having or not having ideals, but he is free to choose between different kinds of ideals, between being devoted to the worship of power and destruction and being devoted to reason and love.”
The writer is a former chief copy editor and editorial writer at The Jerusalem Post. His debut novel, The Flying Blue Meanies, is available on Amazon.
by Rabbi Toba Spitzer In The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion (published in 1937), in the chapter on Chanukah, Mordecai Kaplan reflected on Jewish survival in the face of competing cultures. He wrote: “Paradoxical as it may seem, if a nation wishes to survive, it must not make survival itself its supreme objective, […]
As we prepare for the momentous journey that will take us through November 4th, Kaplan Center Director Dr. Jeffrey Schein offers a perspective on our “aging” candidates.
By Dr. Jeffrey Schein. This position paper explores the well-known Kaplanian notion that Jews live in two civilizations, one Jewish and one North American.
KAPLAN in the period after the end of World War I , was concerned about the issue of free speech. Right now both in America and in Israel the matter of free speech is very much on people’s minds. With Israel at war should we allow ourselves the space to criticize the government in its […]
An Invitation to Future Kaplanian Scholarship by Dr. Vered Sakal. For many years, most of the scholars who wrote about Kaplan were people who knew him personally. During the past few decades, however, more scholars are joining the conversation about Kaplan’s work…Being one of those “second generation” Kaplan scholars, I find this transition – from firsthand to secondhand knowledge – fascinating.
Soon the large canon of scholarship about Mordecai Kaplan will be expanded. Jenna Weissman Joselit, the Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History at George Washington University. She is currently at work on a biography of Mordecai M. Kaplan for the Jewish Lives series of Yale University Press. Our Kaplan Center […]
Mordecai Kaplan founded The Reconstructionist in 1935 to popularize his thought and to show its relevance to issues facing American Jews. Accordingly, each issue of the magazine opened with a series of editorials in which current events were analyzed from the standpoint of Reconstructionism. The editorial line was formulated collectively by the Editorial Board, which […]
Throughout this website, we offer many resources about Mordecai Kaplan’s influential writings and philosophy and how Kaplan’s legacy continues to be woven through contemporary thought and practice.
Pirke Mordecai
with Yovel recipients Rabbi Lee Friedlander and Rabbi Arnold Rachlis
Visit Reconstructing Judaism to explore the way Kaplan’s influence has become woven deeply into the fabric of a major North American Jewish movement.
Kaplanian Voices
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 movement’s 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 Eisenstein’s books Creative Judaism and What We Mean by Religion withdigital copies of those currently out-of-print volumesnow available on our website
Explore the full set of resources related to teaching Mordecai Kaplan through Ira Eisenstein’s writings with these resources
Reflections about Ira Eisenstein as theologian and wise leader by Rabbis Dennis Sasso and Jeffrey Schein
A recording of Rabbi Eisenstein’s contributions that was hosted by the SAJ:Judaism that Stands For All as part of its centenary celebration
Throughout this website we offer many resources about Mordecai Kaplan’s influential writings and philosophy and how Kaplan’s legacy continues to be woven through contemporary thought and practice.
The talmud is a text that spans generations and was composed by groups of individuals through those generations (and not by a single author). It is, therefore, a living document that demonstrates and embodies both Kaplan’s philosophy that Judaism is an “evolving religious civilization,” and Reconstructionism’s commitment to developing Judaism in community. Moreover, the texts from which the Talmud is composed are generated by Jews living in “two civilizations,” whether they be products of the Roman World or of the Sassanian world. Kaplan considered it imperative that we look both at our roots and at our context, but it is not only its historical importance that makes the Talmud so relevant to us as Reconstructionists, but its *reception* history. The Talmud, that is, has continued to be central in many Jewish communities throughout the periods that followed its development, and continues to be a living document with which we can interact as our practice and our Judaism evolve.
Over the past decade I have searched for apps that would open Talmud to learners who have difficulty following the argument without being able to see it unfold before their eyes, without being able to organize the complex information. I have found none. This app does that and more. It allows learners to engage with the text through a Reconstructionist lens and to bring that learning into their present. Kaplan believed that in order to be a Reconstructionist, one had to know what they were reconstructing; to learn how a concept had evolved from Judaism’s beginnings until now. This app allows learners to engage in that process and to become active voices as they bring this central text to life. No other such app, or even written materials that accomplish this task, exist. Upon showing the demonstration video to a rabbinic colleague who graduated JTS, she exclaimed, “this will be the next generation of Talmud teaching everywhere!” We sincerely hope she is correct, and believe that this app can revolutionize Talmud learning.
This method of teaching is not limited to rabbinical students. I have used it with lay-students at synagogues as well, delineating the different layers visually through font or colors. My students (whether rabbinical or lay) are thus able to discern for themselves how, as they adapted to new conditions, the generations of rabbis in the Talmud changed what it meant to be a Jew – their notions of what is important, their approaches to various subjects, and the meanings of the biblical texts that have been handed down to them. My students gain a vivid picture of the evolution of Judaism even within the rabbinic period.
The dream of this project began years ago. Because Talmud is so complicated, and learning it has so many facets to it, I began to teach my classes using an application that was developed in Israel for the purpose of teaching Talmud. The Israeli app visually represented the workings of a Talmud passage so that students could see the ways in which one part of a passage interacted with other parts. There was a basic conflict, however, between the functionality of the app and my teaching as a Reconstructionist.
While I was teaching my students to discern historical layers and agendas, the Israeli app developers had no interest in this philosophy and there was no way to have students represent these layers visually in the app. Students were constantly frustrated that they could not fully visually represent the skills that I was teaching them to apply to the text. Every semester, when I received these complaints, I would tell them that if they found me a software engineer, I would build them an app to teach in a Reconstructionist framework.
Last year, one of my students put me in touch with Michael Sokolovsky, who was excited about the idea and generous with his time, and we began to build. Michael’s Talmud learning had begun at SVARA shortly before we met, and so he was enthusiastic about the project’s potential, not only for rabbinical students, but for lay-students at SVARA and elsewhere. Together we walked through a series of Talmudic passages, trying to imagine what we would want learners to be able to do when the app was in its advanced stages. Our goal was to allow learners to visualize the various workings of a Talmudic passage. On the right-hand side of the app in its current form, the learner sees the linear passage, an area for translation and notes, and the ability to highlight the text in different colors that signify the different historical layers in the passage. On the left of the screen, the learner can organize the material visually in whatever manner makes the most sense to them, and can draw arrows linking one “box” to another, signifying the relationship between those boxes – is “Box B” a question about “Box A”? A challenge to “Box A”? An answer to “Box A”? The learner can also use the left-hand side of the screen to organize the text by historical layer and to read through each historical layer separately. The app allows students to isolate words, ideas, concepts and rulings that undergo change through historical periods and to outline the argument of a passage in its final edited state.
Michael has spent more hours than I can count coding, and although we are still in the early stages of development, I have been using the app to teach my students both last semester and this semester. Students use it to prepare their assignments each week, and it is shared on a screen during class so that any student can follow along or lead others through their thought process. Part of their Talmud learning experience includes each of them teaching their classmates in rotation. This year they have done their own learning and taught their classmates using the app. We have had two feedback sessions with students, who continue to offer ideas as they become more adept at analyzing texts, and thus come to understand their own learning and teaching needs. Our hope is to make this app available not only for Reconstructionist rabbinical students, but for learners in Michael’s SVARA community (a community from which, in fact, many learners go on to become Reconstructionist rabbis) and in synagogues and other Jewish communities. We plan to develop an English version of the app as well, which will be able to be used with translation This will enable rabbinical students to teach within their communities as they become rabbis out in the world.
Jonathan Rosen in The Talmud and the Internet (2000) explored the meandering, highly associational nature of Talmudic thought. A word or phrase in one context is connected with lightning-like speed with the same word or phrase in a different passage, and a new meaning is often derived from the connection.
I had this quintessentially Talmudic experience over breakfast the other day. My wife, who shares the newspaper with me (how quaint, I know), passed on the article In Pod We Trust from the November 11 Minneapolis Star Tribune. As I read of the four criteria for forming a good pod, my mind was cascading back to both my own experiences and the literature about Jewish Havurot (friendship circles). Eventually, I hope to create a dialogue between the list of criteria for establishing pandemic pods from the Star Tribune article with a list of criteria for establishing Jewish Havurot.
PODS: INTIMATE AND SAFE DURING THE PANDEMIC
Thoroughly assess potential pod mates;The four criteria offered for forming an effective pod during the pandemic were:
Keep your pod small;
Agree on clear rules for members to follow; and
Be willing to change course quickly.
In a very real way, the desire to establish real time pods also reflects Zoom fatigue. With all due appreciation for the essential zoom connections Zoom is providing the pandemic, people are now resonating to the tropes heard from David Sax in The Revenge of Analogue (2016) and Nicholas Carr in The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our Brain (2011). From the shadows of the surreal life we have been experiencing, people hunger for the real. People are longing for intimacy that includes feeling and touching as well as seeing and hearing. The guidelines in the Star Tribune article are largely about restoring this intimacy in ways that are both physically and emotionally safe.
Havurot: A Different Kind of Search for Intimacy and Contact
In 1961, Rabbi Jacob Neusner responded to a different kind of problem with not being seen or heard. In his monograph on The Havurah Idea published by the Reconstructionist Press, Neusner outlined a program for establishing a new kind of pod, a group of like-minded Jews looking to study and celebrate Judaism together. These were Jews who were lost in the largeness of mega-synagogues, hence neither seen nor heard in institutional Jewish life. The pandemic of their time was of the neshama (soul) and lev (heart) and not the guf (body).
We might call this the formation of “spiritual and cultural pods”. Neusner suggested that the formation of these pods would be marked by five guiding principles:
The Havurah should take its particular character from the fundamental concerns of Jewish faith and tradition;
The Havurah should seek fellowship rather than simply friendship;
The Havurah should aim at the personal involvement of each member in the achievement of its purposes;
The Havurah should set mundane, tentative, and austere goals and
The Havurah should be regarded under the aspect of time, as an institution that happens at the moment of its own re-creation.
Comparison and Contrast of Criteria for Pods and Havurot
Comparing and contrasting the criteria for the formation of pods and Havurot leads to some insights and, ultimately, a proposal for when we return to the “new normal” in Jewish life.
When will that new normal emerge: in 2021? 2022? 2023? This very uncertainty points to the importance of adaptability embodied in both sets of criteria. It also echoes the focus on goals that are “mundane, tentative, and austere”. One might add “nimble” to that short list as well. Expectations that are so ambitious as to be unrealizable in this pandemic era are not helpful. Projecting a full Jewish life immediately for a Havurah that requires three to five years of nurturing (Rosen, 1995, Stroiman, 1984) is similarly unhelpful.
The imagery of a pod is also striking and applies to both types of communities. The outer shell of strict rules and procedures for the living-together pod allows immune systems to adjust and keeps out intrusions of disease. Jews joining a Havurah are often at a delicate stage of their own Jewish journey and need the protection of small size and intimacy to grow apart from other demanding exigencies of Jewish life.
An Ending Big Idea
I end with a “big idea”. I encourage our rabbis, professional educators, and volunteer leaders to think creatively about the “new normal” that will come to our congregations and other Jewish institutions (bimheirah b’yameinu, speedily in our time). Let’s not be deceived by the rejoicing that will occur as we can move beyond pandemic-restricted groups of 25 or ten to a happy hamon (throng) of 100 or more Jews. Let’s have in place for this return small-group and other community structures that can sustain the joy and intimacy in the long run. This unique moment on the horizon is full of potential to address a long-standing issue in Jewish life.
Jeffrey Schein can be reached at jeffrey@kaplancenter.org.
In this edition of the Contemporary Talmud Page, we begin with an affirmation of Kaplan that “Torah is lifelong moral education.” But is this always true? How might the idea of shlemut (spiritual wholeness), the inward Jewish peoplehood character of tikkun olam, and an appreciation of Shabbat challenge Kaplan’s own assertion that we must always be engaged in moral education? We note that in framing the Talmud page this way, we recognize the complexity of Kaplan’s thought. To have Kaplan argue with himself is a supreme compliment to the richness of his thinking.
Our Tosafot selections begin with Rabbis Margie Jacobs and Richard Hirsh as well as Elizabeth Caplun, focusing on the shlemut and moral weariness theme of the Talmud page. In July, Tosafots by Rabbis David Teutsch, Mira Wasserman, and Sid Schwarz, as well as Dr. Mel Scult, return us to the affirmation that Torah is life long moral education that serves as the Mishnaic anchor of our text.
We thank Rabbi Mira Wasserman and the Ethics Center of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College for co-sponsoring this edition of the Contemporary Talmud Page.
The purpose of Torah is life-long moral education
(Kaplan’s address for the opening of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, 1922)
Mel Scult on Kaplan
Perhaps the most important element in shlemut for Kaplan was integration. He pointed out that this exists on many levels. The first and perhaps the most basic level is the personal. The wholeness, the perfectibility, the integration of the self. For Kaplan, as for Emerson, the self was a process or a series of processes, not an entity. He has the wonderful word to “thingify.” We make processes into things. He pointed out our tendency to thingifciation in connection with Torah and with God and with Israel.
Future of the American Jew
But to qualify for participation in this struggle, Jewry must set its own house in order. The Jewish community is not free from the evils that beset society in general and must accept full responsibility for carrying on the fight against them on its own sector of humanity’s front. (Mordecai Kaplan, Future of the American Jew, 1948; page 54)
The Sabbath
In pursuit of other aims we frequently become so absorbed in the means as to lose sight of the goal… Here the Sabbath comes to our aid. An artist cannot be continually wielding his brush. He must stop at times in his painting to freshen his vision of the object, the meaning of which he wishes to express on his canvas.
“Living is also an art. We dare not become absorbed in its technical processes and lose our consciousness of its general plan… The Sabbath represents those moments when we pause in our brushwork to renew our vision of the object. Having done so we take ourselves to our painting with clarified vision and renewed energy.” (Mordecai Kaplan, The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion, page 59)
Questions
1. These are argumentative, exhausting times. In and of itself, does this demand more “recovery sabbaticals”?
2. How do we pursue all these different goals in ways that are holistic and healthy?
3. Which of these selections would you make the Mishnah (anchoring) piece of your own Talmud page?
4. What might be the defining feature of a successful “sabbatical” from tikkun olam/ moral education?
Tosafot – Rabbi Margie Jacobs on Rest, Renewal, and Mindset
“An artist cannot be continually wielding his brush.” from Talmud page
These are exhausting, deeply trying times. And yet, we are called to act to heal our very broken world. How do we know when to engage in the urgent work of tikkun olam, and when to engage in tikkun hanefesh- taking time to restore our own souls?
Rabbi Isaac Luria’s concepts of mohin degadlut and mohin dekatnut, which we might understand as expanded and constricted consciousness, can be helpful in discerning when to “wield our brush”, and when to put it down and reflect on our work and our own inner landscape.
When we are in a state of mohin degadlut– spacious, stable awareness, we are more likely to engage in the world in ways that are wise, generative and healing. We make better choices. We are better able to listen- to take in a different opinion from our own, or the heartbreaking news of world events- and be moved to growth, insight, or wise action.
The Hasidic commentator, the Me’or Eynaim, wrote that “The secret meaning of the exile in Egypt is.. that awareness was in exile.” When we are in a state of mohin dekatnut– when our awareness is in “exile,” or is constricted, we are like the Israelites in Egypt who “couldn’t listen to Moses because of kotzer ruach (anguished spirit or shortness of breath)” (Exodus 6:9)- In katnut, we lose hope, and are unable to internalize or imagine the possibility of redemption. Like an artist who has lost connection to their internal source of creativity, this might be a moment to put down our paintbrush, turn inward, and allow our “kotzer ruach” our tight, constricted breath and spirit, to settle and soften.
In this video, I invite you to explore how we might look to the length of our breath as a clue to the quality of our awareness and our capacity to listen, to bring healing presence to a challenging experience.
Tosafot – Rabbi Richard Hirsh on Kaplan’s Ambitious Moral Agenda, Stress. And Burnout
“The purpose of Torah is lifelong moral education.” from Talmud page
For someone often identified as a “pragmatist,” Kaplan has a decided tendency to make declarations about “can, should, must” that are often quite impractical–if, indeed, his assertion that Torah = moral education correlates with constant pursuit of social morality, an inference that seems to me neither necessary or obvious.
Using Kaplan’s subject-predicate inversion, by which he reads Psalm 19:8 — “The teaching of YHVH is perfect, restoring the soul” — as “THAT which is perfect and restores the soul IS the Torah of YHVH,” the distinction between “stress” and “burnout” may be helpful. I gleaned these insights from the now-shuttered congregational consulting organization The Alban Institute, whose “Torah” remains a vital resource.
“Stress” is an over-taxing of our capacity to care. It often results from too much flux, change or constant novelty. As a consequence, we may experience loss of perception, loss of options, regression, or illness of body and/or spirit. “Burnout” is an overtaxing of our capacity to cope. It often results from unending demands on us or from unending responsibilities. As a consequence, we may experience disillusionment, self-deprecation, cynicism, and fatigue of body and/or spirit.
Stress is not necessarily destructive; a total absence of stress might leave us spiritually sedentary. “Creative stress” can yield new options, new insights, and new energy. Burnout, on the other hand, does not admit of a “creative” dimension. It leaves us detached, dormant and depressed.
Here we might take comfort from the insight of Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, who helpfully noted that while the biblical prophets were relentless in their demand for an unattainable perfection of personal and social morality (= burnout), the biblical priests were accepting of the limitations and fallibility of humans, and had a sacrifice of one sort or another at the ready to help people reset and restore their convictions and commitments (= creative stress).
While Kaplan’s enthusiasm often leads him to rhetorical excess (“Nothing is more important than….; We must devote all of our energy to…”) his teaching that all things are simultaneously independent and interdependent (God as Cosmic Polarity) suggests that navigating the imperative to engage with and improve upon our self and our world has to be in balance with the responsibility of self-care (and self-control).
For Kaplan, God is, among many other things, what enables us to persist, even when we cannot persevere; to hope, even when we cannot heal; to engage, when we might prefer to escape. As Kaplan himself put it in his sweet prayerful poem “God, The Life of Nature,” when faced with challenge, “the soul is faint; yet soon revives, and learns to spell once more the Name of God across the newly visioned firmament.”
Tosafot – Elizabeth Caplun on Shlemut and Thingification
“For Kaplan, as for Emerson, the self was a process or a series of processes, not an entity. He has the wonderful word to “thingify.” We make processes into things.” from Talmud page
To paraphrase Emmanuel Levinas: 1) True life is not a thing; 2) the experience of rupture opens us to the other, made be-tzelem Elohim (in God;s image); 3) This rupture is where we connect to the divine.
Rupture, in this sense, is not the opposite of shlemut but points to its asymptotic quality: one can only approach shlemut by letting the other in. Accepting the other, the different, the unknown, is integral to the process of attaining shlemut. This process, lest it become “thingified” cannot be accomplished alone.
What do peace and paying your bills have in common? For the Hebrew speaker, the answer is obvious: in Hebrew, shalom (peace) and leshalem (to pay) share the Semitic root sh-l-m, as in shlemut, and carry the general meaning of fullness, completeness or wholeness. In its most basic formulation, when you pay what you owe, you complete the transaction by which the person who provided you with something is made whole again, without delay. “ the wages of a laborer shall not remain with you until morning.” (Leviticus. 19-13). In the case of damage, even accidental, the obligation to make whole remains: “ one who kills a beast shall make restitution (yishalmeinah) for it: life for life.” (Leviticus 24–18).
In essence, the Torah is setting the stage for a shlemut-filled life in community, where parties recognize what they owe one another. The moral obligation to pay a debt is independent of the monetary value of the debt or the social standing of the other party. To become whole as a person, I must first and foremost recognize the other as a partner who deserves respect, justice, and well-being, no matter how different they are from me. My personal shlemut is inseparable from the shlemut of the other. I am closer to Shlemut when I respond “Hineini”.
To borrow from Levinas again, our human moral condition is one of indebtedness to the other. Hineini – declaring oneself ready to carry the burden of the other – is the cornerstone of our ethical obligations, regardless of what comes after we fulfill this obligation. Hineini makes us vulnerable to the unknown. But first, as we said at Sinai, we do.
When I celebrated Passover in the spring, I was reminded of a teaching about the ninth plague, the plague of darkness. It is written: “people could not see one another” (Exodus 10–23). The plague was not a blackout, teaches Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, it was that people did not see each other. By the time of the ninth plague, people stopped helping their less fortunate neighbors, and did not join together to mitigate the situation. The plague of darkness was every person for themselves. It was the end of any sense of society.
The Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education (CJPE) was built on Mordecai Kaplan’s approach to Judaism as a civilization and humbly sees itself as an expression and adaptation of his teachings to the reality of the 21st Century. We defined Peoplehood as “the collective consciousness of the Jewish People. The consciousness that constitutes our collective social enterprise, our ever-evolving civilization, our aspiration to improve the world and our sense of solidarity and mutual responsibility.” In general terms, Kaplan’s framing of Judaism as a civilization and the focus on Jewish collective consciousness, provided us with the conceptual foundations.
Introduction To Peoplehood – An Interactive Course Background Over the last few decades, the word Peoplehood has become part of the Jewish institutional jargon. Jewish organizations use it frequently in their vision statements, publications and grant writing. It has even filtered through to the Jewish media and the Jewish public at large. However, the popular understanding of Peoplehood remains as the global connectivity of Jews and their sense of responsibility for each other. It is perceived to be mostly about the connection of American Jews to Jews in Israel and throughout the Jewish world. Kaplan’s broader framing of Peoplehood as the collective consciousness that constitutes Judaism as a civilization and the current Jewish enterprise, is missing from today’s Jewish consciousness. Furthermore, the Jewish collective ethical conversation is not addressed through the Peoplehood prism. What seems to add to the above confusion is the complex and amorphous nature of the concept. Until today there is no pedagogic approach or curriculum for integrating the development of Jewish collective consciousness into the Jewish educational system. This introductory program aspires to engage Jews with the core themes of Jewish Peoplehood and open conversations that will lead to a much richer and fuller understanding of the topic.
This project seeks to provide a framework for connecting particular Jewish acts to the meaning of Jewish life in its totality.
by Rabbi Jeffrey Schein, Senior Education Consultant and Co-Director
For several years my 8th graders at the Heilicher Jewish Day School in Minneapolis would tease me. Rabbi Jeff are you a GJGDC? I would tease them right back saying “please remind me what is a GjGDC?” They would then answer with the mantra from our semester-long course that a GJGDC is a good Jewish Global Digital Citizen. While I delighted in moving along the conceptual plane explored in my website and my 2018 volume Text Me: Ancient Jewish Widom Meets Contemporary Technology, I recognized that to be meaningful to Jewish teachers a slightly different tact was necessary. My students’ questions would be my guide. The response to their questions is sketched out below with annotated resources.
I can see your heads nodding in agreement with the notion that we live in a highly digital age. I think the nodding would continue if I suggest Jewish values and texts should be a vital resource in responding to everything about who we are and what we are becoming. But how am I to afford my students this opportunity you would ask somewhat incredulously given the challenges of the Jewish classroom.
The twin challenge is not philosophical. It is pedagogical and curricular: how to create enough pedagogic resources and space to allow for meaningful reflection about our Judaism, technology, and our digital lives. I hope I can help with the former and the presence of these resources will inspire you to make the time and space available for this journey.
Below is Dr. Jeff’s prescription and good-tasting medicine for 20 hours of work spread throughout the 5th to 10th-grades years of your Jewish curriculum. It is all part of the quest of becoming a GJDGC (good Jewish Digital Global Citizen)
Educational Decision-Makers (including life long learning committees)
