Mordecai Kaplan and Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Theology of the Individual

I want to talk about Mordecai M. Kaplan's theology. Some might say that such an expression is an oxymoron. I think not. Kaplan, like his teacher Ralph Waldo Emerson, suffers from not being taken seriously as a philosopher. Perhaps he was more the sociologist than the theologian. Yet sometimes the sociologist becomes the theologian and can be very provocative.

I wish to maintain that there is another Kaplan, not Kaplan the sociological theologian, the follower of William James and John Dewey, but Kaplan the reader/follower of Emerson. In his more mature thinking, Kaplan moves toward a greater emphasis on the individual that is clearly Emersonian. Additionally, we find that Kaplan's concept of the transnatural bears a striking similarity to Emerson's "Oversoul."

Kaplan has always been credited by his supporters and his critics for asking the right questions. Hugo Bergman, professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University in the 1930s and certainly no partisan of Kaplan's, once gave him a rather backhanded compliment focusing on Kaplan's ability to ask the right questions. Kaplan was in Palestine teaching at the Hebrew University. His latest book, Judaism in Transition, had just appeared. Writing in Ha-arets in September 1936, Bergman states:

Kaplan dared ask of Judaism questions which we are accustomed to pass over in silence and he tried to answer them according to his viewpoint without prejudice, without fear and with relentless consistency. In this he has rendered religious Judaism a great service. . . . His books are of the category of those whose errors are more important than the truths one finds in many books by others.

Kaplan then adds in his diary, "I never anticipated such praise from one who is a follower of Buber."¹

Kaplan was the evolving religious Jew who continually searched for the right formulation. He enjoyed formulation as any good thinker does, and he formulated and reformulated, but his movements are subtle and in many cases they are lateral rather than linear. He was addicted to formulation and, in fact, was aware of his addiction and regretted not being more of an activist. Once in the late 1920s he had the idea that he should write the diary in the third person. For a few weeks he tried it but then reverted back to ordinary diary style. The entries for this limited period are quite enlightening. For example, he wrote the following about himself: "He had a weakness for formulas. Never having had the fortune of experiencing the thrill of first-hand contact with things, he lived in a universe of words."²

Kaplan's theology is complicated and multilayered, but I believe that the place of the individual holds the key to understanding his theology. We think of him as the advocate of "Judaism as a Civilization"— the community, the Center, the collective consciousness. All of these are central. But, in fact, the individual and individual fulfillment are the linchpins that hold the whole structure together.

Let me put it another way. There are several voices in his head, voices that are quite disparate. There is Ahad Ha-am and Emerson, Dewey and Henri Bergson. These advocates of the collective and the individual were all held in creative tension by Kaplan throughout his life. I would also propose what might be called a theology of mood. Kaplan moves back and forth, sometimes with Ahad Ha-am, sometimes with Emerson, sometimes with a synthesis that resides with Dewey. But always provocatively.

The tensions I am describing emerge most prominently in Kaplan's views on democracy and in his theology. For the young Kaplan, democracy seemed more a threat than an opportunity. The Goldene Medina (golden land) meant that Jews were free not to be Jews. Out of concern for the future of the Jewish people, Kaplan advocated an Ahad Ha-amian Judaism that saw in the collective consciousness and its strengthening the...