Mordecai Kaplan's Judaism as a Civilization at 70: Setting the Stage for Reappraisal

One of my favorite paragraphs in Mordecai M. Kaplan's Judaism as a Civilization—the wonderful and influential book that was the subject of a conference held at Stanford University in 2004 marking the seventieth anniversary of its publication, and the book that forms the principal subject of the articles in this volume—occurs at the very end, when Kaplan, after some 522 pages (not counting footnotes), finally prepares to take leave of his reader. He has, by this point, set forth his ideas for reconstructing Jews, Judaism, and America in 32 chapters full to overflowing with trenchant analysis and harsh critique. He has treated the reader to breathtaking insights and ambitious plans for innovation as well as arresting outbursts of anger and no small degree of indignation. He has rewarded the reader at almost every step with lively prose born of passionate intelligence and palpable impatience with every sign of temporizing, half-heartedness, and hypocrisy. Now, as the book is about to end, Kaplan offers one final exhortation— directed first of all at himself, we suspect, but not only at himself, for Kaplan desperately needs his readers' help in order to accomplish the goals that drove him to write in the first place. Those who look to Judaism in its present state for their salvation, he reminds them, are bound to be disappointed: "The Jew will have to save Judaism before Judaism will be in a position to save the Jew." Jewish civilization in America needed to be reimagined, reinterpreted, reconstructed: "Such a program calls for a degree of honesty that abhors all forms of self-delusion, for a temper that reaches out to new consummations, for the type of courage that is not deterred by uncharted regions." American Jews could accomplish what was needed, Kaplan pleads in effect. He had proved this in a thousand irrefutable arguments. They could do it. He could do it. The "contemporary crisis in Jewish life" could "prove the birth-throes of a new era in the civilization of the Jewish people." Will it, and it shall be no dream! The only requirement was dedication to the goal on which Jewish salvation depended: the salvation here and now, in this world and no other, of Judaism.¹

We titled the 2004 conference "Mordecai Kaplan's Judaism as a Civilization: The Legacy of an American Idea" because our aim was, in part, to assess the ways in which Kaplan's great work not only arose out of the particular context in which it was written but also continues to influence American Jews today. The book has rarely failed to elicit response from its readers, even if that response is not always what Kaplan would have wished. The contemporary impact of his masterwork was underscored at the conference by the large numbers of Reconstructionist Jews who attended every session and avidly followed each debate. But it also became clear that Kaplan's impact today extends far beyond the members of the movement inspired by him and dedicated to "living Judaism as a civilization" in a manner he would have approved. Several of the papers presented at the conference—and reproduced here in somewhat revised form—trace the role played by Kaplan's program in inspiring and shaping salient aspects of developments in American Jewish life, such as the transformations wrought by feminism, the "revaluation" of sacred text, and the renewed engagement with Jewish ritual.

The conference also sought to evaluate Kaplan's arguments on their own terms, to probe influences on his work not previously recognized, and to set him more firmly in the context of his own extremely turbulent era. The articles included in this volume of Jewish Social Studies highlight the extent to which Kaplan's assumptions, points of reference, plans, and aspirations were very much the product of their time. He spoke to, and out of, a particular moment...