RELIGION
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Mordecai Kaplan (1888-1983) addressed a new American Jewish audience.
Understanding
Judaism's
Fourth Branch
Reconstructionism is the creation. of
Mordecai Kaplan, who emphasized
Jewish Peoplehood. Belonging, he said,
takes precedence over believing.
HAROLD M. SCHULWEIS
Contributing Editor
ne hundred and five
years ago Mordecai
M. Kaplan, the founder
of Jewish Reconstructionism,
was born. His thinking is par-
ticularly pertinent to a com-
munity which seeks to pre-
serve its unity in the midst of
diversity.
Reconstructionism is the
only Jewish spiritual move-
ment indigenous to the
American environment. Its
ideology remains the creation
of its founder and theoreti-
cian, Mordecai Menachem
Kaplan, who died in 1983 at
102. His major work, Juda-
ism as a Civilization, first
published in 1934, laid the ar-
chitectural frame of Recon-
structionist thinking. In
1959, Rabbi Ira Eisenstein
assumed the leadership of the
Reconstructionist Founda-
tion; and when the Recon-
structionist Rabbinic College
was founded in Philadelphia
(1968), Reconstructionism
emerged from its role as a
school of thought into the
fourth religious movement in
America, alongside Ortho-
dox, Reform and Conser-
vative Judaism.
Kaplan may best be under-
stood as a philosopher states-
man in that his sociological
analysis of the Jewish condi-
tion and his proposed theo-
logical reconstruction were
motivated by an over-riding
concern: to preserve the iden-
tity, unity and creativity of
the Jewish people threatened
by the ambivalent forces of
modern nationalism and
naturalism. Kaplan viewed
modern Jewry as an old-new
people whose present socio-
political and religious state of
affairs are unprecedented in
its history. No analogy with
other Jewish communities in
the pre-modern past properly
applies to present day Jews
who are citizens of demo-
cratic societies. The forces of
Emancipation and Enlighten-
ment shattered the unity of
Judaism and the Jewish peo-
ple which could no longer be
assured by a uniform theol-
ogy and ritual practice.
Kaplan addressed a new
American Jewish audience,
secularly educated, unwilling
to accept the premises of
supernaturalism or the auth-
ority of other-worldly tradi-
tion, unconvinced that public
and private life should be
regulated by revealed law.
Reconstructionism was de-
signed to effect a creative
adjustment to modern life
in order to salvage and
strengthen the corporate will
to live. Kaplan argued for the
values of living simultaneous-
ly in two civilizations. He
proposed new categories to
deal with the radically dif-
ferent conditions of world
Jewry; he called for a revalua-
tion of Jewish institutions
and the formulation of new
programs to re-define the
modern status of world
Jewry.
Kaplan's social strategy
was not simply that of a
statesman's accommodation
to the undeniable reality of
modernism. For him, natural-
ism, humanism and democ-
racy were not inimical forces
to be fought against; they
contributed insights and
values indispensable for the
revitalization of Judaism.
With equal force, Kaplan
warned against the perver-
sion of those values into
reductionist scientism,
chauvinism and privatism.
Nothing less than a synthesis
of tradition and modernity
could secure the continuity
and creativity of Judaism.
Basic to such a grand plan
for reconstructing Judaism
was Kaplan's characterization
of Judaism as a religious
civilization. On theoretic and
pragmatic grounds, Kaplan
held that the post-enlight-
enment categories which view
Judaism as either' a religion
or nationality distorted the
complex, varied and growing
expressions of a living organ-
ism, the Jewish people. Juda-
ism as a civilization refers to
the collective articulation of
a people's wants, needs,
yearnings and discoveries of
sanctity and meaning. Jewish
civilization is the human
product of a particular people
whose transactions with its
environment yield laws,
mores, language, history, art,
attachment of a people to a
land and religion. The re-
ligious character of civiliza-
tion is the expression of a
people's spiritual personality,
its self-awareness as a com-
munity striving for the salva-
tion or realization of all who
belong to it. Kaplan's holistic
perception of Judaism as a
religious civilization enlarged
the domain of Jewish in-
terests and talents; incor-
porated the diversity of
Jewish religious and cultural
expression; and focussed at-
tention on the organic inter-
dependence of culture, re-
ligion and peoplehood.
Judaism is existentially
rooted in a living organism
with an instinctual will-to-
live. The matrix of the Jewish
civilization is the Jewish peo-
ple. Belonging, the need to
feel part of a people whose
salvation is linked with in-
dividual self-fulfillment, takes
precedence over believing.
The Jewish
heritage exists for
the sake of the
Jewish people, not
the Jewish people
for the sake of the
Jewish heritage.
The superstructure of
Judaism must be responsive
to the needs of the people, and
must be responsible for the
spiritual actualization of the
people. Judaism as an evolv-
ing religious civilization is
"existentially
Jewish
peoplehood,
essentially
Jewish religion and func-
tionally the Jewish way of
life." The priority of Jewish
existence over Jewish essence
lies at the heart of Kaplan's
"Copernican revolution."
The Jewish heritage exists
for the sake of the Jewish peo-
ple, not the Jewish people for
the sake of the Jewish her-
itage.
Kaplan's social existen-
tialism means that the ex-
istential reality of the Jewish
people is prior to and
transcends any doctrinaire
set of beliefs and practices. In
the past, the process of ad-
justing tradition to the needs
of the day was largely un-
conscious, devoid of historic
perspective. Revitalizing the
spiritual values of the tradi-
tion and making the transi-
tion from traditional Judaism
to a Judaism capable of sur-
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