The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan

1. Excommunications: Kaplan and Spinoza

7 Too bad we had only one Spinoza. —Mordecai M. Kaplan, 1939 Most of us think of Mordecai Kaplan as the founding father of the Re­ constructionistmovement.Indeedhewas,buthislifewasmarkedequally by another, quite different, biographical event: he was the first rabbi in theUnitedStatestobeexcommunicatedbytheultra­Orthodox.Excom­ munication is usually associated with the Catholic Church and not with the Jews, but, alas, this painful act has been part of Jewish life for cen­ turies. Indeed, the enemies of Maimonides—Jews, of course—burned his books after he died in 1204 and excommunicated anyone who read them. The most famous excommunication in Jewish history took place in Amsterdam in 1656. Its recipient was Baruch Spinoza, one of Kaplan’s intellectual inspirations. The excommunication of Mordecai Kaplan, which occurred as a result of a prayer book he published in 1945, is a good place to begin a study of Kaplan’s thought. Thinking of Kaplan in connection with Spi­ noza will also raise some fundamental and perhaps disturbing questions about Kaplan. Did Kaplan fully embrace Spinoza’s philosophy, or were there issues on which the two differed? And how do these paired excom­ munications, nearly three hundred years apart, enable us to understand twentieth­century Jewish thinking? Spinoza, the best­known Jewish heretic, was born in Amsterdam in 1632. Rather a precocious young man, he began to think independently about religious matters at an early point and did not hesitate to speak EXCOMMUNICATIONS: K APLAN AND SPINOZA O N E 8 The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan with other members of the Jewish community about his beliefs. A herem (literally,ban)orexcommunicationwaspronouncedagainsthimin1656 bytheleadersoftheAmsterdamJewishcommunity.Althoughtheherem does not specify the particular beliefs that were at issue, the community leaders certainly had in mind the following: he rejected the immortal­ ity of the soul, as well as the providential personal God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and claimed that the Hebrew scriptures and Jewish law were neither literally given by God nor binding on the Jewish people. Excommunication meant that the person involved was to be cut off completely from the Jewish community. Jews were to have no contact with him whatsoever. In the last century, a number of prominent Jews have wanted to rein­ state Spinoza as a member of the Jewish people. Among them are Joseph Klausner, the noted Jewish scholar, and David Ben­Gurion. Klausner, who came to the Hebrew University in the late 1920s, advocated bring­ ing back Spinoza in his inaugural lecture at the university. It is per­ haps also noteworthy that a course in Spinoza’s thought was taught in 2006 attheRabbinicalSchooloftheJewishTheologicalSeminary. Until recently, it was nearly unimaginable that future Conservative rabbis would be studying Spinoza! In addition, Steven Nadler, a well­known Spinoza scholar, asserts in his recent book Spinoza’s Heresy that the whole matter of Spinoza’s status must be reconsidered since the reasons for the excommunication are still unclear.1 Although Spinoza is still considered a heretic by some, he nonetheless occupies an honored place in Jewish history (at least for most non­Orthodox Jews, and even some Orthodox ones).2 Kaplan’s place in Jewish history is much clearer than Spinoza’s, though Kaplan’s transgressions are no less profound. The actual excom­ munication of Rabbi Mordecai Menachem Kaplan took place in New York City at the McAlpin Hotel on June 15, 1945. His “crimes” were mul­ tiple,asweshallsee.InadditiontoattractingtheireofOrthodoxJewsfor several decades, two of Kaplan’s actions were particularly objectionable andbecametheoccasionoftheban:thepublicationofanewprayerbook in May 1945, with multiple deletions and additions, and the lesser appre­ ciated but as important act of publishing a new Passover haggadah four years earlier, which also differed significantly from the traditional text. Excommunications 9 The Torah portion for the week of Kaplan’s excommunication was Korah, which contains the narrative of the quintessential biblical dis­ senter who challenged the authority and wisdom of Moses. The rabbis’ rush to judgment (the herem was issued only a month after Kaplan’s prayerbookappeared)wascertainlyinfluencedbytheirdesiretoclassify KaplanwithKorah,thatmost“despicable”ofbiblicalrebels,butwasalso a result of the concentration camp revelations from Europe then appear­ ing.3 Theultra­Orthodoxorganizationofrabbis,callingitselfthe“Agudat Harabbanim[SocietyofRabbis]oftheUnitedStatesandCanada,”came together a month after V­E day to issue a formal ban against Kaplan. Kaplan, thus, occupies a singular place in American Jewish history, for no other figure has been condemned so fiercely, much less made the object of a ban. How could it happen that a well­known and...