A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism (review)

110 SHOFAR Summer 1998 Vol. 16. No.4 Professor Gurock, in American Jewish Orthodoxy, uncovers several other fascinating episodes that shed light on this variety of Orthodox rabbinical attitudes toward cooperation with other segments of the Jewish community. For example, he chronicles how an upsurge of Christian missionary activity on the Lower East Side in 1905 prompted Americanized Orthodox rabbis to take part in an anti-missionary coalition known as the Jewish Centres Association. The immigrant community's European-style rabbis refused to join, regarding the modern Orthodox as part of the assimilation problem rather than part of the solution. A happier picture emerges from Gurock's essay on American Orthodox rabbinical attitudes toward Zionism during the late 1880s and early 1900s. Contrary to popular assumptions about anti-Zionism in the Orthodox rabbinate, Gurock shows that a significant number of both Americanized Orthodox rabbis and those who (in America) advocated old-world European Judaism were active in the American Zionist movement. They worked alongside Zionist Reform rabbis such as Stephen Wise and Richard Gottheil, submerging theological differences with their Reform colleagues for the sake of their common Zionist goals. Jeffrey Gurock's sensitive, well-written, and meticulously researched books and essays have immeasurably enriched our understanding of the history of the American Jewish community. American Jewish Orthodoxy offers a splendid overview ofthe work ofa scholar whose research sheds crucial light on questions of intra-Jewish conflict and cooperation that are no less compelling today than they were 75 years ago. Rafael Medoff SUNY-Purchase A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism, by Jeffrey S. Gurock and Jacob J. Schacter. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. 220 pp. $40.00. In 1963, Mordecai Kaplan announced his retirement from the Jewish Theological Seminary, "to devote the rest ofmy life to the cause of Reconstructionism." Seminary Chancellor Louis Finkelstein responded to Kaplan's announcement with a personal letter within which he opined that the issues separating them over the years were neither philosophical nor theological but arose "out of historical and biographical facts." Kaplan had always seen Orthodox Judaism in the worst light while Finkelstein had seen it at its best. The observation was well meant but incomplete; while Kaplan never forgave members ofthe Orthodox rabbinate for the removal ofhis father as a dayan on the court of Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph, his personal dissatisfaction with Orthodoxy's theological intransigence was a primary motivator ofhis long and active life. Book Reviews III Although it has been less than fifteen years since his passing, the life and works of Mordecai M. Kaplan have become the subject of numerous academic and public symposia and monographs. Scholarly presentations have been prepared by individuals personally identified with the Reconstructionist Movement as well as nonReconstructionists . To that list may now be added the fust lengthy study to interpret Kaplan's activities from a distinctly Orthodox perspective. Within their carefully researched and highly footnoted study, Jeffrey Gurock, a historian on the faculty ofYeshiva University, and Jacob Schacter, Rabbi of the Jewish Center once led by Mordecai Kaplan, trace the changes in Kaplan from his pious boyhood as the son ofa respected rabbi. The authors trace Kaplan's early career, as the fust graduate ofthe Jewish Theological Seminary to serve a major Orthodox synagogue in New York City, but already a quiet doubter, maintaining traditional Jewish practice and keeping his theological questions to himself. Gurock and Schacter follow Kaplan through two decades during which he served as Kehillath Jeshurun's "minister," received traditional smicha from Rabbi Yitzchak Reines and was promoted to "Rabbi," left the congregation to join the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary and lead its Teachers Institute, published radical theories about Judaism in the Jewish press, developed the Jewish Center on Manhattan's West Side only to resign from that institution over worship practices, and subsequently created the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, which would be housed just a few doors from the Jewish Center on West 86th Street. Their investigation makes three principal points: that although Mordecai Kaplan had rejected personal belief in the tenets of Orthodox Judaism, he kept many ofhis ideas to himself for many years...