The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan

9. Salvation Embodied: The Vehicle of Mitzvot

177 Let every prayer we recite, every song we sing, every teaching we listen to set the current of Israel’s life coursing through our whole being, challenge us to test the ever living truth of what Israel has learned concerning man’s task on earth, and reveal to us the God who always stands at the door of our heart waiting as it were to be admitted. In this spirit let us pray: “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to Thee O God, my strength and my redeemer.” —Kaplan diaries, October 3, 1942 One of the primary differences between religion and philosophy is that religion is always embodied, while philosophy is not. For every religion, thereisaseriesofparticularbehaviorswhichthereligiouspersonshould observe. Primary among these are rituals, especially prayers and holidays .InJudaism,wefindthe halakhah,orJewishlaw,whichconcernsevery aspect of a person’s life. In explaining Kaplan’s approach to Judaism and religion in general, we must first show how his concept of salvation is embodied in the ritual or mitzvah system of the Jewish people, and especially in prayer. Our consideration of halakhah itself will come later. Kaplan believed that religion must retain its novelty. When it is new, it affects us deeply and involves us totally. Martin Buber famously said thatallreligionsaretrueatthebeginning.Kaplan’snotionofreconstruction asks us to employ practices to ensure that our Judaism is always a fresh and exciting experience. According to Kaplan, the mitzvah system must be reinterpreted in terms of modern concepts; it only has lasting value, like any elements of religion,ifitcanbebroughtintolinewithourcontemporaryunderstandSALVATION EMBODIED: THE VEHICLE OF MITZVOT N I N E 178 The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan ing of religion. Kaplan’s methodology, as we have seen again and again, uses the concept of function as a primary organizing principle. When considering a particular ritual, we must ask ourselves what its function wasinitsoriginalsettingandevaluatewhetherthatconceptorritualcan retain that function in the modern world. If that function is no longer possible or no longer useful, we need to decide if that practice should be reinterpreted and, if not, whether the practice should be dropped. For example, Kaplan believed in doing away with ancient distinctions between priest, Levite, and the great mass of the people of Israel. Eliminating these distinctions would have meant dispensing with the privileged access of descendents of the ancient priestly class (kohanim) to honors in the synagogue and to blessing the congregation (duchanen). Itwouldalsomeandroppingtheredemptionofthefirstborn(pidyon haben ), which is tied to ancient laws concerning the priests.1 For Kaplan, such a disturbance would be minor compared to the potential gains. He saw these distinctions as rooted in ancient “racial” distinctions and contradicting the twentieth-century understanding of equality. Any and all such evaluations were for Kaplan at the heart of the process of reconstruction. Reconstruction is ongoing and is the means by which a religion retains its vital essence, its relevance to the hearts and minds of its followers. In turn, all aspects of halakhah, including rituals, prayers, and other mitzvot, need to be reevaluated continually. When we consider Kaplan’s influence, we need to ask ourselves how closely we follow the tenets of his system, just as he constantly asked how closely he should follow the tenets of traditional Judaism. Those who follow KaplanmorecloselylabelthemselvesclassicalReconstructionists,while others may be more liberal in their interpretation of Kaplan’s thought. In the area of prayer, for example, some prayers that were meaningful to Kaplan no longer make sense for a twenty-first-century believer; in turn, Kaplan dropped other prayers that some believe worthy of restoration. Aswithanyinternecinestruggle,thesedebateshaveatmomentsbecome particularly contentious among various strains of Reconstructionists. My hope is to remain apart from this partisan bickering and instead try to clarify how Kaplan’s concept of salvation might be embodied in our daily lives. In other words, how the mitzvah system may be viewed as a concretization of salvation. Salvation Embodied 179 For traditional Jews, the Sabbath is the most holy day, outside of Yom Kippur; the weekly day of rest is intended as a “taste of the world to come.” For traditionalists, “the world to come” (Olam Ha-bah) will have no death, no toil, no food, not even the begetting of children—life would sustain itself, a self-contained entity.2 In other words, life would return to the way it was in the Garden of Eden when the world was perfect as God had first created it. But Kaplan, as...