• IsraelNow Curriculum

    IsraelNow.org

    IsraelNow provides 8th graders an immersive, emotional, and memorable taste of Israel through a week-long trip. Participants return from the program excited to be involved in their respective synagogues and communities, but IsraelNow believes that engagement and education should begin before departure. IsraelNow hopes to develop a curriculum that is experiential and learner centered in order to better engage students while in Israel. This curriculum is for 8th graders and will be flexible so that it can reach children who are already involved in formal, supplemental religious schools, students who only engage in social Jewish programs (youth groups, camps), and those who are not involved in synagogue or Jewish life at all.

    IsraelNow’s program ethos centers around three core principles: Ahavat Yisrael, Medinat Yisrael, and Am Yisrael. In response to an open letter from rabbinic and cantorial students critiquing Israel, Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld succinctly clarified the importance of Ahavat Yisrael. She said, “we are responsible to and for each other,” explaining that we can both view Israel with a critical lens and have a productive and positive relationship with it. Medinat Yisrael, the modern state of Israel, is a focus for IsraelNow, as it’s the place participants will experience. In the generations since 1948, Israel has evolved from a theoretical hope to a concrete homeland. Judaism is as much a peoplehood as well as a religion, and Israel is a connection point for all Jews, we are part of Am Yisrael, even if we are part of the Diaspora.

    The goal of the IsraelNow curriculum is for learners to analyze Israel’s history and to recognize essential elements of Israel’s identity in order to form a foundation for personal connection prior to IsraelNow’s trip. The curriculum will be split into three units that are anchored to the trip itinerary: Contrast between Old and New, Modern Life and Coexistence, and Where do we Come From. The core competencies of the curriculum will be for learners to create personal definitions of Zionism, identify how they can be represented in Israel, understand Israel’s contributions to their lives in the US, and to recognize the evolution of the geographic modern state. These themes and enduring understandings will be taught through the lens of the three core tenets of IsraelNow.

    Post b’nei-mitzvah engagement continues to be a confounding problem for the Jewish community. In a time when students and families are over programmed and pulled in many directions, it’s easy to set religious instruction on the back burner. IsraelNow provides an incentive for 8th grade participation- a trip to Israel. The trip is successful at creating the opportunity for connection but misses the chance to engage within community at home. The IsraelNow curriculum will fill that need. It will be a resource that can be used in various settings and will be flexible enough for communities across the US to implement in a way that fits respective needs. Specifically, the curriculum will include lessons for a traditional supplemental religious school. IsraelNow also hopes to develop resources so that families unaffiliated with synagogues can form cohorts and have private tutors or parents teach the lessons. In more informal spaces, IsraelNow hopes to create sessions that can be implemented over the course of a youth group convention or Shabbaton. And at the camp level, these lessons can be further adapted to shorter sessions, which can be completed during limmud periods.

    Along with providing the resources for formal education, implementation of IsraelNow’s curriculum will help communities foster the soft skills of collaboration and relationship building. The long-term benefits of maintaining engaged students through high school also means that these students will have a foundation for productive and well researched conversations about Israel as they become young and emerging adults. It is not new information that antisemitism is on the rise on college campuses, so it’s of tantamount importance to equip students with the skills and knowledge to participate in dialogue about Israel.

    In the 2020 Pew Research Center’s study on Jewish Americans, it was noted that rabbis interviewed for the project found it harder now to speak about Israel from their pulpits than ever before because of political implications with Israel in the US today. Because IsraelNow explicitly avoids advocacy work with its participants, congregational leadership will not have to worry about further dividing their congregants. The curriculum should do the exact opposite- it should unify the greater community through education without bias. 

    Curricular Goals and Objectives:

    • Unit 1: Contrast Between Old and Less Old Israel (Jerusalem District)
      • Established Goals: 
        • Learners will be able to identify the reasons why Jerusalem  is the biblical capital of Israel.
        • Learners will be able to name  key Jewish leaders who helped create the modern state of Israel and their contributions to the founding of the modern state.
        • Learners will answer, “What does Israel/Zionism mean to me?” 
    • Unit 2: Modern Life and Coexistance (Tel Aviv District)
      • Established Goals:
        • Learners will be able to explain the different cultural groups within Israel.
        • Learners will be able to describe what day-to-day life is like in a modern city in Israel.
        • Learners will expand upon their answers to the question, “What does Israel/Zionism mean to me?”
    • Unit 3: How did we get here? (Southern District)
      • Established Goals
        • Learners will be able to identify stories from ancient Israel locate on a map where they took place in Israel. Learners will be able to outline the ‘morals’ of the stories.
        • Learners will expand upon their answers to the question, “What does Israel/Zionism mean to me?”
    • Unit 4: Post Trip
      • Established Goals: 
        • Learners will be able to construct an answer to the question: Why is Israel important to me and how has my time on IsraelNow informed who I am as a Jew?
    Back to the Innovation Garden

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    Sheridan

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  • Dan Cedarbaum Eulogy by Dr. Eric Caplan

    As many of you know, Dan Cedarbaum spent much of the last ten years running the Mordecai M. Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood. Dan was a co-founder of the Center and its Executive Director. In truth, he was the center of the Center; the force that made the work possible.

    We, the members of the Board of Directors, had the pleasure of working alongside Dan in the planning and execution of the Kaplan Center’s work. Along the way, we gained some insight into Dan as well.

    Dan was, at heart, a Jewish studies scholar. His interest in Jewish classical text, Mordecai Kaplan, and modern Jewish life was boundless and he pursued his study of these with energy, seriousness, devotion and passion. Yes, passion! There was true joy and excitement in his voice when he called to share and to discuss something that he, or someone who he hired, found in one of the many Reconstructionist-related archives that Dan explored.

    Dan was also, at heart, a lawyer. We’d go back and forth with him on a document and then see that the final version was so much more elegant and precise than what we had suggested. Dan would begin all of our on-line programs by informing participants that the program was being recorded and that their “asking a question or otherwise speaking will be deemed to constitute consent to our recording of what you say and posting it to our website.” He would preface that statement by apologizing for being so “lawyerly”—but the apology was never convincing. The Kaplan Center benefited greatly from Dan’s being so “lawyerly.”

    Dan had a gift for networking. When he encountered an article, book or organization that interested him, he reached out to the author or institutional leader and engaged with them. And he often found a way to incorporate that person in a Kaplan Center project. So much of our work was made possible and enriched by the relationships that Dan built. 

    Dan was open-minded. He was always willing to adapt his vision of a program when shown a convincing argument for approaching it differently and he would seriously consider ideas for projects that were not previously on the Center’s agenda. Dan had not personally engaged much with Jewish educational thought when Jeffrey Schein proposed to him that the Kaplan Center help to initiate and sustain a project to formulate and proliferate a 21st century vision of Kaplanian Jewish education. Dan not only integrated the project into the work of the Center; he attended and actively participated in the many seminars it convened. 

    Dan was generous with time and money; so many worthy projects would not exist without this generosity. And Dan was gracious. He was careful to thank everyone who contributed to a program and to point out all Kaplan Center Board members participating in one of our events. Although he was the public face of so much of our work, he never intentionally drew attention his way. In fact, he was markedly uncomfortable when one of us would thank him publicly for his work.

    Dan: knowing you has been a great blessing. We cannot believe that you are gone. We will cherish forever the conversations that we had with you and the many experiences that you made possible. We will never forget you. We will continue the work of the Kaplan Center; the institution that you created and steered with such intelligence and menschlikhkeit.

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    Eric Caplan

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  • The New Haggadah (1941)

    [Presented with thanks to HebrewBooks.org and to Aharon Varady of the Open Siddur Project.]

    [pdf-embedder url=”https://kaplancenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Hebrewbooks_org_11272.pdf”]

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    Daniel Cedarbaum

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  • A New Haggadah for a Time of Crisis?

    A “pdf” version of the entire 1941 Haggadah (rarely seen these days) is available here (with thanks to HebrewBooks.org and to Aharon Varady of the Open Siddur Project).

    [pdf-embedder url=”https://kaplancenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Kaplan-Center-flier-320-2-web.pdf” title=”Kaplan Center flier 320-2 web”]

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    Daniel Cedarbaum

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  • From Our Founding Executive Director, Dan Cedarbaum z”l

    More than 80 years ago, at the very beginning of the very first issue of The Reconstructionist journal, Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan and his colleagues reprinted an editorial from a 1928 issue of that journal’s predecessor, The S.A.J. Review, succinctly explaining their reasons for the creation of a new movement. “[T]he problem of Jewish life is just th[e] problem of unity,” the editorial stated. “A solution to the problem of Jewish life depends upon finding, or making, a positive ideology which will enable both Orthodox and Reform, both believers and nonbelievers, to meet in common and to work together. It is only by conceiving Judaism as a civilization, and not as a general religious movement embracing many sects, that we will be able to construct such an ideology and reconstruct the Jewish civilization. To interpret Judaism as a civilization is to open the way for unity, because such interpretation enables us to seek the neutral factors of unity in language, the rebuilding of Palestine, and social relationships among Jews. In Judaism as a civilization, religion, the most important element in it, will flourish the better because it will not then be the subject of so much negative controversy.” More specifically, the editorial noted, “The moment you propose one mode of worship or one attitude toward observance for another, you automatically divide. These very things depend on taste, habit, and pressure of necessity. Hence, it is about them that our differences are most deeply rooted and therefore most irreconcilable.”

    About 75 years later, the great Jewish thinker Rabbi Dr. David Hartman, z”l, discovered that Kaplan’s agenda for the reconstruction of Jewish civilization was remarkably fresh and vital. Hartman provided a nice summary of the particular approach to Judaism that Kaplan offered to those who do not find other approaches compelling. “What Kaplan wanted,” Hartman wrote, “was to make Judaism real as an experience, not as a supernatural obsession. … He believed that Judaism is not most essentially from God; it is, rather, the Jewish people’s prayer to God. In Kaplan’s understanding, it is not that the Jewish people exist in order to serve God and to obey the commandments; the commandments exist to help the Jewish people access a sense of possibility for their own moral future. … Redemption is not otherworldly salvation at the end of time. … For Kaplan, redemption is not something that’s going to happen at the end of days when we’ll all be instructed to pack our bags and welcome the Messiah. Redemption is an individual’s growth into a complete human being, a person who fulfills all of his or her aptitudes. Redemption is not an abstract philosophical or theological construct, but a fine-tuning of the human soul that helps us to love more and to be more sensitive. It creates a meaningful pattern of self-fulfillment.”*

    Our mission statement reads as follows: “The mission of The Mordecai Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood is to disseminate and promote the thought and writings of Rabbi Kaplan and to advance the trans-denominational agenda of the Kaplanian approach to Judaism in the 21st century by producing or otherwise making widely available publications and other resources, both in print and on-line, by facilitating academic conferences and broader educational events and by spurring creative experimentation in the formation or reorganization of various kinds of Jewish communities and institutions. In so doing, we will strive to insure that the influence of Rabbi Kaplan’s thought in the 21st century is commensurate with his stature as one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the 20th century.”

    Why is this mission so important? When in about 40 years some of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be considering maintaining their Jewish identity in North America, we are virtually certain that among the options available to them will be a variety of healthy Orthodox and near-Orthoprax communities. We are much less confident that they will be able to find a liberal community that is intellectually vibrant, emotionally fulfilling and programmatically daring, and at the same time is strongly rooted in the Rabbinic Jewish past that, in Kaplan’s famous words, should always have a vote but not a veto. Increasing the chances that such serious, but religiously progressive, alternatives in Jewish communal life will exist for our descendants is of vital importance to us, and we believe that implementation of Kaplan’s agenda for the reconstruction of Jewish civilization is the best way to do so. This agenda ranges from the creation of new Hebrew liturgical materials to the production of new Jewish music and art to the redefinition of the fundamental concept of the kehilla, of the community. Most of this agenda, surprisingly, still awaits any attempt at implementation.

    We believe that the Kaplanian approach to Judaism can strengthen each of the existing denominational movements and have a positive influence on the lives of individual Jews regardless of their levels of observance, or even, within limits, their theologies. We resist use of the term “post-denominational,” but we embrace use of the term “trans-denominational,” and in doing so we recognize that “none of the above” is becoming a sizeable denomination.

    Our key projects, some of which are well under way and some of which are still in the planning stage, are detailed elsewhere on this website. Stay tuned for much more information about those projects in the future.

    My colleagues, Eric Caplan, Mel Scult and Jack Wolofsky, and I are excited to have embarked on what we consider an important adventure. We invite you to join us.

    The Mordecai Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood is an independent organization.  The Kaplan Center works in cooperation with the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association but has no affiliation with either of those organizations.

    *David Hartman, “Redemption and the rational mind,” The Jerusalem Post, March 29, 2010.

    Dan Cedarbaum passed away on July 2, 2021.

    Eulogy by Dr. Eric Caplan

    On August 4th, 2021, many of us gathered on Zoom for a study session to mark the conclusion of the sheloshim, the first 30 days of mourning, for our friend and colleague, Dan Cedarbaum.

    Click here to watch the video.

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    Hirsch Fishman

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  • Dan Cedarbaum Eulogy by His Wife, Caryn Jacobs

    Dan Cedarbaum was my husband since 1987, but we were together since 1981, when we were both students at Harvard Law School. He was the love of my life, and I – and our entire family – are devastated by this loss.

    We started dating during our second year of law school and were together for the next 40 years. In him, I saw a handsome and brilliant man, funny, cultured and well-read. In me, he saw a pretty girl who knew how to cook. And Dan certainly had a legendary appetite. He also wanted someone smart, which I was, but everyone knows (and I will admit now) that Dan was much smarter. He was so smart that he would often pontificate on arcane facts that my sons and I suspected he was making up but rarely had the knowledge, ourselves, to challenge. We would come to call these DACTS (Dad Facts).

    We had almost everything in common, and where we did not, we brought each other into our interests. I instilled in Dan a love for classical music and he became devoted to Mozart operas, so much so that we would always see Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni whenever it played in town. We even dragged the kids to a performance, with limited success (they are long operas). He knew the Italian words to the arias, and although famously tone-deaf, would always attempt to sing along.

    For his part, Dan introduced me to Judaism, which continues to enrich my life. We both relished the cycle of holidays and traditions, especially with our kids. Every Shabbat, he would buy me fresh flowers, to decorate our table. We put up an elaborate Sukkah every year, and with it the inevitable arguments between the two of us over which parts went where. The kids would decorate it with the non-religious Christmas ornaments and paper chains. Dan always made sure we did the right blessings and screened ornaments to make sure they were appropriately Santa-free.

    Judaism was one of Dan’s great passions and he eventually largely retired from law to pursue various Jewish causes. He founded and ran and Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood, and in that role, planned and presented numerous important scholarly programs. He sponsored such programs as One Jewish Evanston, which united all branches of Judaism in worship and study. And he was one of the world’s foremost scholars on the life and writings of Mordecai Kaplan. For 15 years he ran a Talmud study group, which I hope to continue in his name. He was a leader and board member of many synagogues and a founder of Camp JRF. During COVID, he led Shabbat and High Holiday services in our backyard; he kept the community going, and many said these services sustained them through those dark times.  

    Dan’s greatest passion, however, was for his family. He was always holding and kissing our two boys, learning how to change their diapers even though he was very persnickety about cleanliness. I can still see the joy in his eyes as he would hold our babies during High Holiday services, enjoying the renewal of life in both liturgy and in fact. They knew from Day One that they had his unconditional love. And Jacob and Samuel, he was so proud of you and loved you so much.

    Because of my work, which frequently required me to be out of town, Dan was a solo parent much of the time. He watched over the children with love and attention, going to pediatrician appointments and teacher’s conferences, helping with homework and college applications, coaching soccer, taking the kids to Hebrew School, playing board games, golf, and tennis with them … the list is endless. He even deigned to play Hearts with us, which, as a lifelong ace Bridge player, he considered to be “Bridge for Idiots.”  

    He was at his best on family vacations. Sometimes we would play 72 holes of mini golf straight. Frequently accidents were incurred during these activities, especially biking. I heard about them only much later. Sometimes there was negligence, such as allowing our two toddlers play in the Florida sun for hours without sun screen, requiring a trip to the walk-in clinic for severe sun burn. The kids, who survived, loved him, all the same. The attempt by him, my mother, and our longtime nanny, Joy, to hide the incident from me was laudable but ultimately futile. But Dan was of the view that fathers were less careful with children than mothers, and that this was a good thing. I think he was right.  Our kids are intrepid because of Dan.

    He truly loved our extended family. He was happy to include my relatives in all of our vacations. My sisters Laura, Julie, and Jessica, and my brother Jimmy, know how much he did for them and with them. And my mom, Ann, depended on him for everything from financial management and assistance with medical matters to card playing and printing online recipes.

    Dan had his own enjoyments, too. He was a consummate foodie and wine connoisseur and knew his way around any wine list. We loved going out to dinner, and I loved for cooking for him. There was no more appreciative audience for a good meal. His own cooking skills were perhaps more lackluster. In law school, I once handed him a head of lettuce and asked, “do you know how to wash this,” and he said yes. Then, after a few silent moments, he said, “pretend I don’t know how to wash lettuce.”

    He loved cars. His latest being a Shelby Cobra, a white Mustang with a big blue racing stripe. The more horsepower the better. He loved dogs, from his childhood dog, Cookie to our late family dogs Briar and Snoopy, and our new puppy, Lizzy, with whom he played fetch and raced around the yard endlessly.

    As a husband, he was attentive and loving. He lavished me books and jewelry, and always encouraged me to go shopping or on outings with my sisters or friends. He plied me with candy, despite my ever increasing waistline. When I was obsessed with Colin Firth in the A&E Pride and Prejudice, he got him to send me a signed picture postcard. He even rooted for the Cubs during the World Series, despite being a die-hard Mets fan. He planned and emceed a huge 40th birthday party for me, with numerous speakers and roasts that remains among my fondest memories. And for my 60th birthday he planned a wonderful family trip to Paris, including multiple Michelin-starred meals.

    Dan was a mensch. He was not superficial. He had depth and convictions and made every day count. He was a DO-ER. He had a happy and beautiful and complete life, and he made an indelible mark for the good.  

    In his last few days, Dan and I would sit in the yard at night and watch the lightening bugs (which Dan called fireflies). Two nights ago, after Dan’s death, I was sitting in the yard at 2 AM, unable to sleep, and saw a lightening bug on the ground. It flashed its light for a time and then the light stopped. Dan was the light of my life; of our family’s life. And while that light is now out, the memory of the light will last with us forever.

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    Eric Caplan

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  • One Jewish Evanston – Shavuot 2016/5776

    “Ki gerim heyyitem b’eretz Mitzrayim: For you were strangers/sojourners/refugees/non-conformists/converts? in the land of Egypt”

    All are welcome to join us on Saturday evening, June 11, 2016, beginning at 7:00 p.m., as multiple Evanston communities will again join together under the banner of “One Jewish Evanston,” to mark the end of Shabbat and to celebrate the beginning of Shavuot.

    The evening will feature, in addition to Shavuot evening services and good food, a Tikkun Leyl Shavuot (an evening-long series of learning sessions) with some of the best teachers anywhere, selected by each of the participating communities.  The learning will focus on a phrase that appears repeatedly in the Torah, “Ki gerim heyyitem b’eretz Mitzrayim: For you were strangers/sojourners/refugees/non-conformists/converts? in the land of Egypt”.  We will explore various aspects and interpretations of this phrase, particularly as they relate to the experience at Sinai that is central to the celebration of Shavuot.

    The full schedule for the evening is available by clicking here.

    Feel free to join us for all or part of the program.  Advance registration is required, but you need to pay for the event if and only if you will be joining us for dinner after services.  

    For more information, please call Dan Cedarbaum at 847-492-5200 or e-mail him at dan@kaplancenter.org.

    One Jewish Evanston is sponsored by The Mordecai M. Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood. Based in Evanston, the Kaplan Center is an independent organization devoted to the transformation of Jewish community.  Its mission is to disseminate and promote the thought and writings of Rabbi Kaplan and to advance the agenda of the Kaplanian approach to Judaism in the 21st century, perhaps most importantly by spurring creative experimentation in the formation or reorganization of various kinds of Jewish communities and institutions.  The Kaplan Center’s perspective is explicitly trans-denominational.

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    Hirsch Fishman

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  • Mordecai Kaplan on Women

    by Mel Scult

    [See Chapter 6 of his Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century: A Biography of Mordecai M. Kaplan (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993).]

    Kaplan’s first congregation, The Jewish Center, was Orthodox.  Seating was separate though equal and there was never any question of altering the synagogue ritual to include women.  The major question of the day was women’s right to vote.  Kaplan advocated the emancipation of women.  In his preaching, he went beyond mere support of the vote which he took for granted but did not argue for changing any rituals to include women.  In the fall of 1918, he took the occasion of the Sidra (Torah portion) “Haye Sarah” to deal with the issue of women’s rights.  Preparing the way for the sermon, the center journal published the following question during that week: “Shall the Emancipation of women be merely a duplication of men?”  On Shabbat morning Kaplan pulled no punches when he said that, “Judaism of the Galuth [Diaspora] has said nothing and done nothing to lay claim to any share in the Emancipation of women.”  The major religions, moreover, always lagged behind when it came to movements for social betterment.  He asserted that, “the movement to emancipate women was nothing more than the logical extension of democracy.”

    If Judaism in general offered no help on the issue of emancipation, Kaplan suggested looking to the Bible for guidance.  He pointed out that there are many strong holy women in the Bible including Deborah, Miriam and of course Rebecca, who was the focus of the week’s portion.  If Genesis presented us with the matriarchs, however, it also presented us with the curses of Eden.  The curse on Eve reads, “Toward your husband shall be your lust, yet he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16).  It is clear, Kaplan maintained, that women are destined to be redeemed from this curse in the time to come just as man will be redeemed from his curse.  We know this because Genesis also tells us that God said, “Let us make humankind, in our image, according to our likeness!  Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea…”  The key word here is Veyirdu; “they,” both male and female, shall rule the earth together.  The ideal is that men and women were meant to be equal and the world is a fall from that ideal.

    He looked closely at Rebecca and used her as a model.  Women must be emancipated not for power but for service.  Man’s essential sinfulness stems from his lust for power; the same is true for women.  Women in the past have sought to gain power through their charms.  Women have both gained and lost because of this — in Kaplan’s words, “What if not her desires to entrance man with her charms has caused man to look upon her as his doll and play thing to minister to his wants?”  Thus the enslavement of women has resulted from her femininity, “The power of the eternally feminine,” as he called it.  Now women must be emancipated, not essentially for more power, but for greater service.  Just as Rebecca went the extra measure in her service to Abraham’s servant so must women do the same.  It is almost as if Kaplan were talking about women in the same terms that Jews in general have always talked about themselves – as the chosen people.  The Jews alone are the only ones who have known God says the prophet, and therefore they have a higher standard to follow.  If women were really free they would revolutionize the political sphere by lifting it to a higher level.  The chosenness of women, he believed, made them more humane.  “Women will purify politics, make industry more humane and make justice to the consumer instead of profits to the producer the standard of the market.”  Emancipation is not aimed at power “…neither her own particular power, nor that masculine power which has contributed so much to the destruction of the world.”  As Hannah so eloquently put it in her hymn of thanksgiving to God, “…for not by strength (power) shall man prevail.”[1]

    Kaplan was often at his best when he attempted to reinterpret fundamental concepts.  At one point he put forth the idea that reverence for the individual was more basic than the concept of ‘love thy neighbor.’  Being created in God’s image was the Biblical way of talking about the absolute value of human life.  “…the reason it is wrong to take human life is that the human being wears the image of God, therefore, when a human being is slain, something more than that which is merely human is destroyed, the very image of God is shattered.”  The proper attitude toward our fellow human beings is respect, the same awe and respect “…we associate with the idea of God.”  We revere human life because “…it is a spark of that life that animates the universe,” Kaplan told his congregation.  He believed that acting out of reverence was a higher principle than acting out of love.  “It is only after mankind will have acquired the principle of reverence for man that it will be possible to love man as he should be loved, not merely ‘as thyself’ but as the reflection of the Divine.  ‘Beloved is man’ said R. Akiba, “for he was made in the image of God.”[2]

    Footnotes:

    [1]. The Sermon on the Emancipation of Women was delivered at the Center on November 2, 1918.  The concept of the chosenness of women is clearly in the text of the sermon although the word chosen is not used there but supplied by this author.  The verse is from I Samuel 2:16.  The translations from Genesis are from Everett Fox, In the Beginning – A New English Rendition of the Book of Genesis (New York: Schocken Books, Inc., 1983).  The verse in Zachariah 4:6 expresses the same thought about power and was a favorite of Kaplan’s although he did not use it here.  “Not by might nor by power but by My spirit, sayeth the Lord of Hosts.”

    [2]. The notion of the primacy of  man as the image of God is found not only in Jewish sources but in Christian as well. It was a staple of  16th century Ranaissance Platonists who saw man as a reflection of God and therefore worthy of love.

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    Hirsch Fishman

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  • Policies

    Sexual Harassment Policy Statement

    The Kaplan center board is in the process of making minor revisions to this template about sexual harassment recommended to 501c 3 non-profits by the IRS.   In the interim, we will be guided by the spirit of the guidelines which lawyers have advised us are essentially sound. 

    This policy is based on common practices and includes all the components which make a sexual harassment policy comprehensive, and any effective policy must include most if not all of the content of this sample sexual harassment policy.

    The Kaplan Center is committed to providing a safe environment for all its employees free from discrimination on any ground and from harassment at work including sexual harassment.

    The Kaplan Center will operate a zero tolerance policy for any form of sexual harassment in the workplace, treat all incidents seriously and promptly investigate all allegations of sexual harassment. Any person found to have sexually harassed another will face disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal from employment.

    All complaints of sexual harassment will be taken seriously and treated with respect and in confidence. No one will be victimized for making such a complaint.

    Definition of sexual harassment in a workplace

    Sexual harassment is unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature which makes a person feel offended, humiliated and/or intimidated. It includes situations where a person is asked to engage in sexual activity as a condition of that person’s employment, as well as situations which create an environment which is hostile, intimidating or humiliating for the recipient.

    Sexual harassment can involve one or more incidents and actions constituting harassment may be physical, verbal and non-verbal. Examples of conduct or behavior which constitute sexual harassment include, but are not limited to:

    Physical sexual conduct

    • Unwelcome physical contact including patting, pinching, stroking, kissing, hugging, fondling, or inappropriate touching
    • Physical violence, including sexual assault
    • Physical contact, e.g. touching, pinching
    • The use of job-related threats or rewards to solicit sexual favors

    Verbal sexual conduct

    • Comments on a worker’s appearance, age, private life, etc.
    • Sexual comments, stories and jokes
    • Sexual advances
    • Repeated and unwanted social invitations for dates or physical intimacy
    • Insults based on the gender of the worker
    • Condescending or paternalistic remarks
    • Sending sexually explicit messages (by phone or by email)

    Non-verbal sexual conduct

    • Display of sexually explicit or suggestive material
    • Sexually-suggestive gestures
    • Whistling
    • Leering

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    Margie Jacobs

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  • Kaplan and Democracy

    It is often observed that for Mordecai Kaplan (and others) democracy was the religion of America. 
    The Kaplan Center appreciates our grant from the Jewish Partnership for Democracy: A More Perfect Union. This grant allows us to embark on a “religious” journey from this February through next October. Each month we will select and distribute to our friends and partners a passage from Mordecai Kaplan or one of his students and collaborators.

    February 2024

    This month features Rabbi Manny Goldsmith, zichrono l’veracha.

    For Kaplan, the idea underlying democracy is that the interests uniting human beings, if they become truly aware of those interests, are strong enough to ward off the divisive influence of people’s differences. The crucial problem of freedom is how to guard our individuality and the capacity to think for ourselves and yet cooperate with those whose backgrounds, upbringings and outlooks are different from our own. This is an art, said Kaplan, that human beings are slow to learn. Democracy should be conceived as a process of social experimentation by which people are seeking to learn that art and to apply, step by step, the wisdom acquired as a result of such experimentation. That is why the art of free, voluntary cooperation, the ultimate objective of democracy, must constantly be cultivated.

    -Rabbi Manny Goldsmith, Reconstructionism Today, Spring 2003

    VOTE

    • In your own life, how do you balance authenticity and devotion to your beliefs and deeply understand the belief systems of those different than yourself?
    • How do your communities engage in the ongoing “experimentation” of creating balance between these two forces?
    •  Why indeed are we so slow to practice “the art of democracy?  
    • In your own life, when do you practice this “art of democracy” most naturally and fully?

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    Margie Jacobs

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