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IV Mordecai Kaplan and the New Jewish "Vocation" ~E PRINCIPAL THEORIST of American Jewish identity 11. :hroughout the second generation, and the principal critic of the doctrines of mission and chosenness, was also the period's most influential, prolific, and incisive Jewish thinker. Turn where one would in those thirty years, one found Mordecai Kaplan with a critique of the traditional idea of election as he understood it, or of one of its many outfittings in modern dress. Turn the election idea as one would, so that a more pleasing side of it faced the modern audience, and Kaplan was there to brush away the cosmetic and show that even in this aspect the idea just could not be countenanced. If American Jewish thinkers of the second generation spent so much time reaffirming, reinterpreting, reexplaining, and simply pondering the doctrine of Israel's chosenness, the reason was in no small measure that Kaplan spent so much time in attacking it. Chosenness, he insisted, unlike the rest of Jewish tradition, could not be "reconstructed," but only repudiated. My concern in this chapter is to document that singular refusal to reconstruct, to explain it, and, most important, to chart its implications for the self-definition of American Jewry. Kaplan's disavowal of election in favor of an idea of "vocation" was far from idiosyncratic. It was, rather, essential to the entire enterprise of Reconstructionism as Kaplan envisioned it, and to the concepts of God and Judaism which he proposed . It was also particularly well suited to the altered socioeconomic character of the community to which it was recommended, and expressed rather precisely the dilemmas of the rabbis who were, in the beginning, its principal audience and supporters. The nuances of Kaplan 's attempt to reformulate the symbols by which American Jewry defined itself to itself and to gentile America take us to the heart of what American Jewish thought in the second generation is really about. 73 74 • THE #SECOND GENERATION" Chosenness as a Vocation Because so much that is crucial to American Jewish life began with its publication in 1934, one tends to forget that the author of Judaism asa Civilization was far from the beginning of his own career when the appearance of the book gave that career dramatic new impetus.1 Born in Lithuania to a distinguished Talmudist in 1881, Kaplan had come to New York at the age of eight, attended public school and heder, spent nine years at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and received a B.A. from City College and an M.A. from Columbia University. The biographical details are telling: first because the late nineteenth century left its mark on Kaplan's thought, second because he pioneered a path, vocational and intellectual, that would prove well traveled in the generation to whom he spoke most directly. Kaplan's influence can be traced in part to this personal acquaintance from experience with the dilemmas of his students. While serving as rabbi of a prestigious Orthodox congregation in New York in 1909, Kaplan was invited by Solomon Schechter to head the recently established Teachers Institute at the Jewish Theological Seminary. A year later, he became professor of homiletics at JTS as well, successfully turning the teaching of sermon-giving, held in low esteem at the institution, to the matter of sermon content, and thence to the need for a sweeping redefinition of Judaism that would enable rabbis to reach their congregants more effectively. In 1921 Kaplan left a second Orthodox rabbinical post in order to found his own congregation, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, which (borrowing a term from Ethical Culture) he served not as rabbi but "leader." In the interim, Kaplan had resigned and regained his position at ITS, declined Stephen Wise's offer of the presidency of the Jewish Institute of Religion, and attracted many young rabbis, educators and Zionist intellectuals to the branches of his Society that had by now been formed in cities of the East and Midwest. Kaplan's ideas on the rejuvenation of American Judaism were appearing regularly in such periodicals as the Menorah Journal as early as 1910. It was their systematic recapitulation in Judaism asa Civilization , however, that gave the impetus both to Kaplan's own intellectual production and to the growth of his movement. Reconstructionism now had an ideology, an orientation vis-a-vis the Jewish past, and a detailed program of action. Despite variations within the ranks over the next several decades, especially regarding Kaplan...

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