Reconstructing Judaism, Reconstructing America: The Sources and Functions of Mordecai Kaplan's "Civilization"

Mordecai Kaplan's notion of Judaism as a "civilization" remains one of the most influential contributions to modern Jewish thought. The term civilization transformed a religious conception of Judaism into one that includes the totality of social interactions, cultural attributes, and religious folkways that Jews share. In contrast to his vociferous rejection of traditional concepts such as chosenness and a supernatural God, Kaplan's formulation of Judaism as a civilization gained tremendous currency in American Jewish life and helped ensure Kaplan's legacy as one of the twentieth century's most significant Jewish thinkers.¹ For a term as integral to Kaplan's thought and reputation as civilization, however, comparatively little research has focused on identifying the precise sources and functions of the term itself. Kaplan's decision to adopt the civilization terminology, we shall find, was connected to his engagement in the political debates concerning the nature of American democracy and nationalism that characterized the interwar years in the United States. Exploring this relationship highlights two important dimensions of Kaplan's legacy: the centrality of political concerns in his reconstruction of Judaism, and the challenges to paradigms of Americanization that accompanied his embrace of American intellectual and political assumptions.

In this article, I argue that civilization plays two seemingly contradictory functions in Kaplan's thought. Kaplan's initial interest in the term originated with his desire to equate Judaism with the highest values of America, incarnate in widespread notions of America as one of the world's great civilizations. However, in the years leading up to the publication of Judaism as a Civilization in 1934, Kaplan realized that civilization could play a second, and equally important, function. Following intellectuals such as Sir Alfred Zimmern, Randolph Bourne, and Horace Kallen, Kaplan appropriated the term civilization in order to present Jewish nationalism as an important corrective to totalizing claims of American nationalism prevalent in the years leading up to the publication of his magnum opus. Kaplan, along with other European and American thinkers, hoped to challenge the rising levels of nativism and ethno-racial definitions of nationalism by presenting a vision of civilization fit for a nation composed of many nations, including the Jews.

Civilization in Kaplan Scholarship

Scholars have generally interpreted Kaplan's notion of civilization within the thinker's larger project of transforming Judaism to fit the intellectual and political expectations of American life. Charles Liebman introduced this approach with his definitive essay "Reconstructionism in American Jewish Life," published in 1970.² The eminent Israeli sociologist and analyst of American Judaism argued that "the American scene, with its political democracy, naturalistic philosophy, and pragmatic temper" inspired Kaplan's reconstructionist program.³ More recent statements by leading scholars of American Judaism, such as Arnold Eisen and Jonathan Sarna, indicate the enduring legacy of Liebman's work in our understanding of Kaplan's objectives in writing Judaism as a Civilization.⁴

The trope of Kaplan as a master builder of the "American-Jewish" synthesis permeates scholarly attempts to explain the precise function of civilization within the context of Kaplan's work. Liebman's essay, for example, argued that civilization was not nearly as important as the adjective "religious," which Kaplan often paired with his master term as a modifier in speaking about Judaism as a "religious civilization."⁵ By linking the two terms, Liebman contended, Kaplan indicated his commitment to remaining within the parameters of the popular conception of American Jewish identity based solely on religious criteria. Kaplan's selection of civilization merely represented his endeavor to differentiate himself from the Reform and Orthodox movements without significantly altering the assumptions of liberal Judaism. This explanation neutralizes any potentially radical connotations that might be embedded within such a novel category of Jewish identity. Liebman accurately captured Kaplan's inability to break completely from the denominational paradigm of American Jewish life. Yet, he failed to fully account for Kaplan's commitment to centering his program on such an unprecedented designation.

More recent scholars have proposed other answers, noting the prominent position of civilization in two works of influential American intellectuals published...