Securing the Future of the Kaplan Center

Dear Friend of the Kaplan Center,

Daniel G. Cedarbaum z’l, was the moving force behind the Mordecai M. Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood.  In the course of building the Center, he created a robust entity with a motivated and informed board that is committed to carrying on Dan’s legacy through the Center’s continued work.

It is the wish of Dan’s widow, Caryn Jacobs, that his ongoing projects be completed and new projects be undertaken, consistent with the Kaplan Center’s continuing mission.  Indeed, Dan’s family is fully committed to the Kaplan Center’s work.

In this spirit, Caryn is asking those who believe in the Center or simply want to honor Dan to make contributions to the Center that she will match up to a total of at least $10,000. Click here to donate.

Supporters who donate $500 will receive a signed copy of the Falk Haggadah. 

Your contribution will support many exciting and important projects, a number already in mid-stream, including:

  • Marcia Falk, Night of Beginnings: A Passover Haggadah (Jewish Publication Society, expected February 2022). In true Kaplanian spirit, with a boldly original approach to Jewish traditions old and new, Falk’s Haggadah carries Jewish prayer and theology forward into our times.
  • Eric Caplan, Jewish Social Justice Thought (1880-2021): a North American Reader (Jewish Publication Society, expected Fall 2022). This anthology gathers together writings of Jewish thinkers and social activists who deeply engage with Jewish text, ritual, or historical experience to show a Jewish imperative to be involved in the pressing social issues of our time and that Jewish sources provide a compass to use in addressing them.
  • Soterics: The Art of Being Human.  This unpublished manuscript by Kaplan summarizes his thinking in the mid-fifties and is perhaps his most sophisticated and compelling work. Several publishers have shown interest in this important work.
  • Webinars in the coming year that will engage Marcia and Eric about their respective volumes, explore the challenges of defining and imparting Jewish literacy, and continue the creative work of the “21st Century Kaplanian Vision for Jewish Education” project.
  • The newly established Daniel G. Cedarbaum Prize for an educational project that is Kaplanian in spirit and innovative in character (in partnership with the Eisenstat-Messinger Foundation, Reconstructing Judaism, Camp Havaya, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and the Reconstructionist Educators of North America).

We hope and expect that the Kaplan Center will pursue its mission for decades to come. We thank you in advance for supporting the work of the Center: the  organization to which Dan devoted so much of his time, skills, and resources and of which he was so proud. (We are mindful that for most of you this invitation is arriving at the end of the high holiday season with its remarkable spiritual coda of yizkor/remembering. We appreciate your act of remembering Dan through Tzedaka.)

Jeffrey Schein and Eric Caplan, co-directors of Kaplan Center 
Caryn Jacobs, for the Jacobs-Cedarbaum Family 
Jane Susswein,  Mel Scult, and Jack Wolofsky, Kaplan Center Board Members 

Click here to donate.