Mordecai Kaplan

Mordecai Menahem Kaplan was born Mottel Kaplan in Sventiany in the Russian Empire (present-day Švenčionys in Lithuania) on June 11, 1881, the son of Haya () and Rabbi Israel Kaplan. Mordecai was brought over to New York in 1889, at the age of nine. In 1902, he was ordained at JTSA. In speeches and articles in 1912 and 1916, he chided American Orthodox Judaism for not adequately embracing modernity. Yet he remained the rabbi of the center until around 1922, when he resigned due to ideological conflicts with some of the lay leadership. He, along with a sizeable group of congregants, then established the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, which later became the core of the Reconstructionist movement. Judith read from the Torah at this ceremony, a role that had traditionally been reserved for males. In 1925, the American Zionist Organization sent Kaplan to Jerusalem as its official representative for the opening of Hebrew University. In 1935, a biweekly periodical (The Reconstructionist Journal) was started under Kaplan's editorship, which was "dedicated to the advancement of Judaism as a religious civilization, to the upbuilding of Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) as the spiritual center of the Jewish People, and to the furtherance of universal freedom, justice, and peace." Kaplan further refined the goals of his ideology in subsequent books, including: The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion (1937), Judaism Without Supernaturalism (1958), and The Religion of Ethical Nationhood (1970). Kaplan saw his ideology as a "school of thought" rather than a separate denomination, and in fact resisted pressure to turn it into one, fearing that it might further fragment the American Jewish community and hoping that his ideas could be applied across denominations. Kaplan was dissatisfied with traditional rituals and prayer and sought ways to make them more meaningful to Jews who agreed with him. In 1941, he wrote the controversial Reconstructionist Haggadah, for which he received criticism from colleagues at JTSA. However, this did not stop him from publishing the Reconstructionist Sabbath Prayer Book in 1945, in which, among other unorthodoxies, he denied the literal accuracy of the biblical text. As a result, he was excommunicated by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, who held a herem ceremony at which his prayer book was burned. Although Kaplan preferred that Reconstructionism remain a non-denominational school of thought rather than a separate denomination, in the late 1940s to early 1950s, a number of laypeople in synagogues throughout the United States decided to organize an independent federation of Reconstructionist synagogues, and by 1954, the Federation of Reconstructionist Congregations and Havurot was organized. As the years passed, the number of affiliates grew, but it was not until the late 1960s that the movement actually became a separate denomination, when the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College opened its doors in 1968. By the beginning of the 21st century, it would include over 100 congregations and . Kaplan was a prolific writer. In addition to his published works, he kept a journal from 1913 until the late 1970s, comprising 27 volumes, each with 350–400 handwritten pages. The journal is certainly the largest by a Jew, and may even be one of the most extensive on record. After the death of his wife in 1958, he married Rivka Rieger, an Israeli artist, in 1959. He died in New York City in 1983 at the age of 102. He was survived by Rivka and his daughters Judith Kaplan Eisenstein, Hadassah Musher, Naomi Wenner, and Selma Jaffe-Goldman, as well as seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. His funeral was held at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, which he founded. ==Relationship with Orthodox Judaism==

Kaplan began his career as an Orthodox rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York City, assisted in the founding of the Young Israel movement of Modern Orthodox Judaism in 1912, In 1945, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis "formally assembled to excommunicate from Judaism what it deemed to be the community's most heretical voice: Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the man who eventually would become the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. Kaplan, a critic of both Orthodox and Reform Judaism, believed that Jewish practice should be reconciled with modern thought, a philosophy reflected in his Sabbath Prayer Book..." Due to Kaplan's evolving position on Jewish theology and the liturgy, he was also condemned as a heretic by members of Young Israel, which he had assisted in founding. His followers attempted to induce him to formally leave Conservative Judaism, but he stayed at JTS until he retired in 1963. Finally, in 1968, his closest disciple and son-in-law Ira Eisenstein founded a separate school, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, in which Kaplan's philosophy, Reconstructionist Judaism, would be promoted as a separate Jewish religious movement. ==University establishment==

Kaplan wrote a seminal essay, "On the Need for a University of Judaism," in which he called for a university setting that could present Judaism as a deep culture and developing civilization. His proposal included programs on dramatic and fine arts to stimulate Jewish artistic creativity, a college to train Jews to live fully in American and Jewish culture as contributing citizens, a school to train Jewish educators, and a rabbinical seminary to train creative and visionary rabbis. In 1947, with the participation of Rabbi Simon Greenberg, his efforts culminated in the establishment of the American Jewish University, then known as the University of Judaism. His vision continues to find expression in the university's graduate, undergraduate, rabbinical, and continuing education programs. ==Kaplan's theology==

Per Rifat Sonsino, Kaplan taught: Not all of Kaplan's writings on the subject were consistent; his position evolved somewhat over the years, and two distinct theologies can be discerned with careful reading. The view more popularly associated with Kaplan is strict naturalism, à la John Dewey, which has been criticized as using religious terminology to mask a nontheistic (if not outright atheistic) position—one JTS colleague in the 1950s, Will Herberg, went so far as to compare it to the position of Charles Maurras toward the Catholic Church. A second strand of Kaplanian theology makes clear that God has ontological reality, a real and absolute existence independent of human beliefs, while rejecting classical theism and any belief in miracles. In 1973, he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II. == Awards ==

• 1971: National Jewish Book Award in the Jewish Thought for The Religion of Ethical Nationhood ==Bibliography==