The American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan

9. Ahad Ha-Am in Kaplan: Roads Crossing and Parting

CHAPTER 9 Ahad Ha-Am in Kaplan: Roads Crossing and Parting Meir Ben-Horin It is widely accepted that Kaplan was an Ahad Ha-Amian. Rabbi Samuel M. Blumenfield, who from 1954 to 1968 served as director of the Department of Education and Culture of the World Zionist Organization-American Section, coined the phrase the ''Ahad HaAm of Americanjewry." 1 In his tribute to Kaplan, Gerson D. Cohen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, saw him, in part, as attempting "to articulate a new Zionism to America , a vision of Ahad Ha-Amism brought to these shores that spoke of aliyah as well as the continued creativity of the Diaspora.''2 Professor Arnold J. Band of UCLA linked Kaplan and Ahad Ha-Am, without a hint at qualification. In his contribution to a recent volume of essays on Ahad Ha-Am, he asserts that "Chaim Weizmann , David Ben-Gurion, Berl Katznelson, and Mordecai Kaplan turned to Ahad Ha-Am's writings for ideological support.''3 But another contributor to the same volume, Evyatar Friese!, who based his interpretation on an entry of 4 October 1914 in Kaplan's journal, leaves no doubt about the need to revise the blanket judgment. "Mordecai Kaplan," he comments, "clear-minded and skeptical, wrote in his diary in 1914 that the purest expression of Ahad HaAmism in America was the Bureau of Education of the Kehillah in New York. Led by Samson Benderly, the Bureau aimed to impart a 221 222 MEIR BEN-HORIN national jewish education, whose secularism Kaplan considered both wrong and futureless. Mordecai Kaplan kept those doubts about Ahad Ha-Amism to himself." 4 Broader in scope is Gideon Shimoni's recognition that while Kaplan's notion of the centrality of Zion in judaism as a Civilization "brought him very close to Ahad Ha-Am's cultural Zionism," the difference between his view and Ahad HaAm 's is "substantial." Kaplan's affirmation of the Diaspora went far beyond that of Ahad Ha-Am, "both in the religious orientation of his 'Reconstructionist' Judaism and in his insistence on the parallel value of a Diaspora jewish life 'in two civilizations.' " 5 Students of Kaplan's writings will not find it difficult to document his acknowledgment of Ahad Ha-Am's influence on his thinking . At the age of almost ninety, Kaplan in 1970 still held himself indebted to Ahad Ha-Am and, therefore, dedicated The Reliaion of Ethical Nationhood, published that year, not only to Schechter and Brandeis but, first of all, "to the memory of Ahad Ha-Am (Asher Ginzberg) who revealed to me the spiritual reality of the jewish people." Some thirty years earlier, those who came to pay tribute to Kaplan on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday heard him reflect on his development as a loyal jew: "As for myself, the Zionist movement and particularly the Ahad Ha-Amist conception of the jewish people as a living organism, animated by an irresistible will to live, enabled me to find spiritual anchorage.'' 6 Some twenty-five years later, in an interview aired over CBS and published as "Reconstructionism in Brief," Kaplan spoke of the influences that determined his new conception of judaism: "One was that of Ahad HaAm and the other was that of john Dewey. Ahad Ha-Am enabled me to shift the center of gravity in judaism from theology to peoplehood . john Dewey taught me how to think straight on any subject ."7 Perhaps Kaplan's first reference to Ahad Ha-Am may be found under the date of 19 August 1905. That day Kaplan, age twenty-four, recorded in unpublished reflections entitled "Communings with the Spirit" his conviction that "Achad Ha-Am's [sic] conception of nationality plus [Matthew] Arnold's interpretation of Israel's (ancient) genius for righteousness contain that which could form a positive expression of the Jewish spirit. All it wants, is definiteness and detail." 8 However, even these few passages make it clear, explicitly or AHAD HA-AM IN KAPLAN: ROADS CROSSING AND PARTING 223 implicitly, that as far as Kaplan was concerned, Ahad Ha-Am needed to be supplemented. In some respects, Schechter, Brandeis, and Dewey, along with Henry Sidgwick9 and Emile Durkheim, 10 led Kaplan along the path of his life. However, Arnold loomed larger than all the others combined, except the jewish classics from the Bible to the present. Kaplan's declarations of indebtedness to Ahad Ha...