Encore Archive

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Kaplan, a Teacher for our Generation

By Richard Hirsh (Sh'ma 11/214, May 15, 1981)

I have never met Mordecai Kaplan; I have had neither the opportunity to study with him or to hear him preach; yet of all thinkers, who have addressed the critical issues facing the Jewish people in the modern era, none has had a greater influence on me than the man whom I know only through his writings. I was a senior in college when I first read Kaplan's magnum opus Judaism as a Civilization. Although by then some forty years old, this book spoke to the very issues with which I was struggling as I contemplated the rabbinate as a career. I found Kaplan's analyses insightful and program inspiring and I recognized, in his work the boldest attempt to meet the challenges facing the Jewish people. I eagerly worked my way through Kaplan's other writings, finding his continued determination to rethink his ideas to be evidence of open-ended methodology. In the years since I first read Kaplan, having reread his work and having taught his ideas, I am more critical of many of his assumptions, and several of his conclusions, but my orientation to Judaism and my understanding of the rabbinate are both clearly stamped with his imprint.

I am most indebted to Kaplan for his conception of the role of the rabbi. Before I read Kaplan, I was hesitant about choosing the rabbinate as a career. It seemed to me a prerequisite that one had resolved such issues as God, revelation, and halakha before one made such a commitment. Kaplan enabled me to see that it was indeed possible to study for the rabbinate while still struggling with these and other issues, for the essential commitment one had to make was not to a theology or ideology, but to a people. From Kaplan I came to see that the role of the rabbi in the modern era involves serving the Jewish people and perpetuating Jewish civilization. The pluralism of the American Jewish community, which Kaplan not only recognized but embraced as a source of creativity, dictates that one might serve as a rabbi in a variety of ways. The prerequisite for the rabbinate is ahavat Yisrael - love of the Jewish people - and a desire to contribute to their creative survival. Out of such a commitment, one could build responses to the important issues facing Jewish life.

Peoplehood and Religious Pluralism

Having been raised in a non-observant home, my first intensive encounter with Judaism occurred in college. Having assembled a plethora of information about the history, culture, and religion of the Jewish people, I still lacked an integrating factor, a concept or ideology which would enable me to assemble my information into an organic whole. Kaplan's definition of Judaism as the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people provided the answer. Thus viewed, the diverse aspects of Jewish experience no longer seemed disconnected or even discordant; rather, all aspects of Jewish life could be seen as component parts of a common historical experience. If a unifying element were to be found, it could not be theology or ritual practice, both of which had undergone major changes as Judaism evolved. Kaplan identified the one constant in Jewish experience which could be traced from the earliest Biblical days down to our own era: the Jewish people itself.

These two essential Kaplanian concepts - Judaism as an evolving religious civilization, and Jewish peoplehood - were not only important to me for understanding the past; they were determinative for my understanding of the present and the future. With the Jewish people as my focus, Judaism could be seen as a social system whose purpose was to serve the needs of that people. If Judaism were viewed as a civilization, then the various religious and secular denominations within Judaism all represented valid ways in which one could participate in the life of the Jewish people. As I came to understand the implications of Kaplan's ideas, I saw that the task of the rabbi was not to determine and establish one understanding of God, or mitzvah, or revelation for Jews; instead, the rabbi was to see participation in Jewish life as a series of options along a spectrum of involvement. In modern Jewish life there had to be room for many viewpoints. This insight of Kaplan's regarding peoplehood and pluralism is for me the truest application of the idea of clal Yisrael.

God as Process Toward Human Fulfillment

One can hardly speak of Kaplan's influence without mentioning his unique approach to the issue of God. When I first read The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion, I was somewhat startled at Kaplan's open disavowal of certain aspects of traditional rabbinic theology, although my own views were certainly closer to Kaplan than to the rabbis. Once I could see beyond the negations to the affirmations Kaplan was making about God, I recognized a religious humanist approach which I could accept within the framework of the Jewish religion. I found in Kaplan's concept of God as a process toward human fulfillment (in Kaplanian terms, salvation) a dynamic idea which could be translated into a social and individual ethic. If contemporary Reconstructionism chooses to speak in terms of Godliness rather than of a "power making for salvation," the focus and import remain the same. In fact, the term Godliness conveys more clearly what is implicit in Kaplan's theology, namely that it is more important that we know what God does, than that we know what God is. Put differently, it is more important to know when God is, than it is to know what God is.

Halakha - Old Framework - New Ideas

Every rabbinical student wrestles with the issue of the authority of halakha, and we at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College are no different. Kaplan's view of mitzvah as folkway, and of halacha as a naturally evolved, rather than a supernaturally revealed, system, makes it possible to take tradition seriously without becoming fixated on ritual as an end in itself. Ritual for Kaplan, is a means to an end; it is the way in which we celebrate essential Jewish values. Therefore, traditional rites can be adapted, amended, and even rejected depending upon their ability to convey meaning. Outward forms may be retained so long as fresh content can be infused. Most important for me has been Kaplan's insistence that one work within the boundaries of tradition when possible, but that one also be prepared to go beyond those boundaries necessary. Tradition is a guide, but it can no longer be viewed as an authoritative code.

Despite the fact that Kaplan's original work is over half a century old, his basic ideas and his rigorous methodology remain applicable to Jewish life today. He remains the only thinker to have been responsible for the creation of a rabbinical school modeled after his program, and that this school flourishes, indicates that Kaplan's message still carries meaning for many Jews. For me Kaplan is partly legend, partly reality, but his vision of a reconstructed Judaism serving a reconstructed Jewish people is the vision that brought me to the rabbinate, has sustained me in my studies, and will direct my career as I become a rabbi and teacher in Israel.