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Kaplan’s Theology of the Personal
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Creative Judaism
Creative Judaism
Rabbi Richard Hirsh’s Introduction to Creative Judaism (Ira Eisenstein, 1936)
Mordecai Kaplan published his 550-page Judaism as a Civilization in 1934, generating considerable interest and discussion among Jewish leaders. But Judaism as a Civilization was, in the words of Ira Eisenstein, ātoo elaborate for the average reader . . . a number of people interested in acquainting themselves . . . with the conception of Judaism as a civilization have requested that a shortened and simplified version of the book be prepared.ā
Rabbi Eisenstein undertook that project, consolidating Kaplanās extensive volume into a 200-page summary whose purpose was āto make clear exactly what it means to be a Jewā at a time when āmany Jews today do not want to be Jews.ā
Eisensteinās little book, Creative Judaism, condensed Kaplanās verbose prose into an accessible and readable summary of key points. Eisenstein explains concisely and clearly āJudaism as a Civilizationā; āWhat Makes Judaism a Civilizationā; and āWhat This Version of Judaism Implies.āĀ
His concluding chapter, āCreative JudaismāA Program,ā explained to the average Jew how to ārediscover Judaism by learning to know its true scope and characterā; to āredefine the national status and reorganize the communal life of the Jewsā; and to āreinterpret and vitalize our tradition.ā
For those wanting to grasp āwhat all the excitement was aboutā when Judaism as a Civilization appeared, Creative Judaism was a quick and easy way into the discussion.Ā
While both books are approaching their 90th anniversaries, and the Jewish world out of which they emerged and to which they spoke is long gone, the essential ideas on which Kaplanās approach to Judaism rests remain vital and vibrant. Creative Judaism helps us rediscover the importance of providing clear categories and concepts that can still help Jews navigate through their heritage in a meaningful and transformative way.
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Kaplan and Creativity Talmud Page
Response for the Kaplan and Creativity Talmud Page
Rabbi Bob Gluck (November 5, 2023, revised March 5, 2024)
Mordecai Kaplan reinterprets the traditional concept of God as creator as the attribute of human creativity. He articulates this in several ways, among them: āthe continuous emergence of aspects of life not prepared for or determined by the past.ā (The Meaning of God in Jewish Religion, 1937, 62). In the decades following Kaplanās death, it has become common practice for writers to describe creativity as the potential everyone holds to make spontaneous choices throughout the course of our daily lives. To offer one example following this perspective, walking down a street or a path can involve constant decision making shaped not only by habit, muscle memory, and our environment (like the need to avoid walking into a tree), but by constant spontaneous innovation. Certainly, creativity is an attribute of all human beings.
Kaplan viewed artistic endeavors to be a heightened instance of creativity. Kaplan spoke of the creative artist as ācreator par excellence.ā (Meaning of God in Jewish Religion, 1937, 77). While Kaplan understood the Arts to be an integral part of Jewish civilization, he lacked a deep understanding of artists and artistic expression. For Kaplan, the value of Art was in its potential to enhance and enliven Jewish life. Kaplan also took note of the tendency of Jewish creative artists to not engage in Jewish communal life. He wondered how their expressivity might be marshalled in service of an aesthetic revitalization of Jewish life.
I am a musical composer and pianist as well as being a rabbi. As much as I am interested in creative Jewish living in a broad sense, my primary interest in ideas about creativity is understanding and furthering artistic expression. I donāt believe that Kaplan understood a lot about the motivation and processes involved in creative artistry, although he recognized as early as 1934 that there was an aspect of artistic endeavor that is solitary rather than communal. To this point, he acknowledged that ācertain types of Art, chiefly literature and sculpture, require very little direct and immediate social cooperation toward their production.ā (Judaism as a Civilization, 202)
For me, composing music is the kind of solitary endeavor that Kaplan speaks of, albeit social in its performance. Kaplan no doubt learned more about these dynamics from his daughter, musicologist and composer Judith Kaplan Eisenstein. Musical composing is distinct from other activities or ways of being in my life. It is one that entails craft, intensive shaping and reworking material, which hopefully resolves into a sufficiently organic whole. In this sense, it is very much akin to literature, which involves multiple drafts of text, and sculpture, which entails multiply building up materials and then carving them back.
The individualized aspect of composing is a means not an end since performance is a social activity, between performers and between performers and an audience. Composition and performance are social in their needs for communities to sustain and support their creative endeavors. The fuller realization of Mordecai Kaplanās vision of an aesthetically enlivened Jewish community requires not only engagement of artists to serve Jewish communal life, but movement on the part of Jewish communities to gain nuanced understandings of the realities and resource needs of those who dedicate their lives to the solitary and social aspects of artistic expression.
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Revaluation & Transvaluation Talmud Page
After reading join the dialogue.Ā Count yourself among the tosafot (next generation of commentators).Ā Send a comment as short as a sentence or as long as two paragraphs to Dr. Jeffrey Schein (jeffrey@kaplancenter.org). He will collect your comments and help us expand the Talmudic process.
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Recording of āMel Scult – The Journals of Mordecai Kaplan, Volume 3″ (West End Synagogue 11-2-20)
In order to view or download the texts that accompanied this program, please click here.
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Recording of āSaving Shavuot, Counting the Omer, and Family Engagement” (4-19-20)
In order to view or download the sources packet for the program, please click here.
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Recording of āMordecai Kaplan at The Jewish Centerā (5-24-20)
In order to view or download the PowerPoint presentation for this program, please click here.
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The Stolen Beam: A Study of Reparations for Descendants of Enslaved Africans in the U.S.
Primary Contacts:
Jeffrey Gold
jeffreywgold51@gmail.comDevorah Jacobson
devorahjacobson18@gmail.comIn what ways is the Stolen Beam āKaplanian in spirit?ā
Working for social justice was an essential part of Kaplanās vision. āThe Jewish religion,ā he wrote, āshould articulate and urge upon us those values which would impel us to utilize our abilities and our opportunities both for our own salvation and for that of our fellow man (sic).ā As we see it, the Stolen Beam is also resonant with Kaplanian thought, especially in the ways the Jewish religion can provide a program for living and acting dynamically within two civilizations. For our community, the series has allowed for important āexternal workā, including relationship building between the JCA and outside communities. It has encouraged relationship building with African American leaders in Amherst and beyond, as well as Black and White leaders who are spearheading our own civic effort, Reparations for Amherst. The series has also allowed for important internal work.
Not only has the Stolen Beam series inspired secular Jews who had little engagement in the JCA to get involved but some have also become inspiring models of Jewish engagement. It has clarified for some the importance of doing racial justice work as Jews in the context of a Jewish community, committed to putting core Jewish values and ethics into action. This aligns with Kaplanās desire to create a common umbrella for both religious and secular expressions and also, in the words of Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, āmaking our synagogues vessels of tikkun olam.ā
Finally, the Kaplanian spirit is evident in the living and evolving nature of the Stolen Beam series itself. The curriculum has evolved in both content and format these last 16 months, responding to the needs of the community using it. It now has been used in both Jewish, Christian and secular settings as part of reparations education.
When the Stolen Beam was used recently with Board members of Reconstructing Judaism, new formats were introduced including a period of discussion in hevrutah, as well as the use of racial affinity groups.
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Mural of Jewish Living Values
Primary Contact: Eric Schulmiller
cantoreric@rsns.org
https://rsns.org/The inspiration for this project began when our congregation undertook a capital campaign to raise money to renovate and refurbish our sanctuary and adjacent spaces. Our community placed a high value on creating spaces which would engender participation and belonging, and to that end, one of the additional rooms that was renovated was an adjacent basement area that had been underused and in need of a complete structural overhaul. Upon completion, we were left with a lovely open space, which we dedicated to fostering connections among our youth and teen community. Filled with comfortable seating, games, and media, we have already begun to use this space for fun-filled, enriching programming. But there was one feature of this new space that cried out for attention – a giant, blank, white wall that spanned the entire length of the room!
In order for this space to truly feel like a home, our leadership began to brainstorm ways to engage our entire community in order to not only beautify and personalize this space, but to foster dialogue about our communityās most deeply-held values in the process. We decided, at the suggestion of our Rabbi, Jodie Siff, to reach out to mural artist and Jewish educator Jennifer Levine, whom Rabbi Jodie has known for many years through her connection to the Leadership Institute. As Robert Bangiola, General Manager of the Dance and Theater Programs at Bard College said about Ms. Levine and her work: āHer graceful line and creation of drawings-within-drawings, continually guide the viewer on an unusual journey of things familiar and unfamiliar. Gentle yet bold, her work has come to define what a sense of community can be for all of us.ā After an initial conversation with Jennifer Levine, we decided that the theme of the mural would be inspired by the Values of Spiritual Peoplehood that many of our youth have encountered at Camp Havaya and that are emphasized in our own educational programming. We began planning a series of encounters with these values among different groups of stakeholders, as we sought to democratically decide on three core values that would form the thematic foundation of this mural. Over a period of several months, we have engaged in dialogue with teens in our Boysā and Girlsā Rosh Hodesh groups, faculty and staff in our synagogue school, our seventh grade bānei mitzvah families, and our leadership team.
After these values exploration sessions, led by our clergy, our community decided upon three values that represent our communityās core identity: Kehillah (Community), Tikkun Olam (Social Justice/Social Action), and Kavod (Inclusivity – a derivation of Derech Eretz which focuses on our seeing the Godliness present in each human being). Of course, the value of Hiddur Mitzvah would also be ever-present in the artistic process of designing and painting this mural, as the value of Hochma was instrumental in its conception!
The intergenerational conversations created by these values explorations are proving to be tremendously beneficial to our community. And with the goal of creating a lasting artistic and communal tribute to this process, it has energized large segments of our community in a deeply impactful way. We believe that the curricular materials we are developing for moving from values exploration to mural creation can be widely replicated in other Jewish communities, and that the successful funding and completion of this process will not only create a beautiful gathering space for our youth, but can also be used as a springboard for ongoing conversations around the Values of Spiritual Peoplehood as the mural itself becomes a living document to be encountered anew by subsequent generations in our community.
As Mordecai Kaplan wrote in Judaism as a Civilization, āThe art of a civilization is its individual interpretation of the world in color, sound and image, an integration that is familiar and profoundly interesting to the people of that civilization. This art contributes a unique expressive value to each object of the spiritual life of that people.ā We believe that our Mural of Living Values project fulfills Kaplanās vision by enabling our community to define, express and interpret its most deeply-held values in a way that is intergenerational, innovative, and profoundly interesting to our learners. By engaging broad swaths of our congregation in this values exploration journey, we believe we have found a way to bring meaningful Jewish learning to segments of our community that arenāt typically engaged with each other in an innovative, deeply Reconstructionist way.
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Realism, Pluralism and Salvation ā Reading Mordecai Kaplan in the 21st Century
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. This shift is both welcome and unsurprising, as Kaplan continues to fascinate academics and Jewish leaders who seek to communicate his work to a broad as possible audience. Being one of those “second generation” Kaplan scholars, I find this transition ā from firsthand to secondhand knowledge ā fascinating. Are we getting to know a different Kaplan, when we separate the man from the ideas? I believe we are, as the distance allows us to explore the relevancy of Kaplan’s work to our own time and socio-political realities.
Kaplan, the founding father of Reconstructionist Judaism, based his project of the reconstruction of Judaism on the rejection of supernatural cosmology and the idea of a transcendent God. But even though his work is often portrayed in psychological and sociological terms, his writing also addresses deep philosophical and theological issues, such as linguistics, ontology and epistemology. Presented as such, we come to see how Kaplan’s efforts can relate to current religious debates that explore the tension between transcendent and non-transcendent religious worldviews and seek justification of religious pluralism. For, even though Kaplan’s work does not offer an organized theoretical account of these matters, it does contain the necessary elements to support and inform such discussions.
It is very exciting to think about the new ways through which Kaplan’s vast body of work ā some of it is still being sorted and published for the first time by scholars such as Mel Scult ā invites 21st century scholars to explore, expand and reshape the Jewish universe. This same universe that Kaplan was so keen on preserving and adapting for Jewish people all over the world ā an open, pluralistic, optimistic universe in which individuals and groups can achieve peace and salvation.
Vered Sakal is the 2021-2023 Melanie and Andrew Goodman visiting fellow for the Olamot Center for Scholarly and Cultural Exchange with Israel, at Indiana University, Bloomington. She holds a PhD in Jewish thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Vered was a fellow at the Tikva Center for Law and Jewish Civilization at NYU, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University, and the Bloomington Symposia, IU Institute for Advanced Study. Her fields of research are religious studies, modern Jewish thought, liberal theory and subaltern studies. Vered is ordained as a Rabbi by Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.
