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	Mordecai Kaplan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Due to Kaplan's evolving position on Jewish theology, he was later condemned as a heretic by Young Israel and the rest of Orthodox Judaism, and his name is no longer mentioned in official publications as being one of the movement's founders.
		Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan's theology held that in light of the advances in philosophy, science and history, it would be impossible for modern Jews to continue to adhere to many of Judaism's traditional theological claims.
		Kaplan's theology went beyond this to claim that God is the sum of all natural processes that allow man to become self-fulfilled.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Mordecai_Kaplan (648 words)

	MyJewishLearning.com - History & Community: Mordecai Kaplan
		[Mordecai] Kaplan was born in 1881 in the small town of Svencionys, in the Lithuanian district of the Jewish Pale of Settlement in tsarist Russia.
		Congenial to Kaplan was Conservatism's commitment to the scientific study of the Jewish past, its sympathy for Zionism, and its concern for the unity of the Jewish people.
		Kaplan has proposed that Godhood is a “trans‑natural," "super‑factual," and "super‑experiential" transcendence not infringing on the laws of nature, but constituting a potentiality that transforms the elements of nature into organic wholes greater than the sum of their parts.
	www.myjewishlearning.com /history_community/Modern/ModernReligionCulture/MoreEmergence/Reconstructionism/MordecaiKaplan.htm (1090 words)

	Reconstructionist Judaism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Reconstructionism was developed by Rabbis Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983) and Ira Eisenstein over a period of time spanning from the late 1920s to the 1940s.
		Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan held that in light of the advances in philosophy, science and history, it would be impossible for modern Jews to continue to adhere to many of Judaism's traditional theological claims.
		Kaplan posits that revelation "consists in disengaging from the traditional context those elements in it which answer permanent postulates of human nature, and in integrating them into our own ideology...
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Reconstructionist_Judaism (1367 words)

	Kaplan Family
		Josef Kaplan was born in Kalisz in 1913.
		Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's meteoric rise as one of the most effective, persuasive, scholarly and prolific exponents of Judaism in the English language came to an abrupt end on January 28, 1983, with his sudden death at the age of 48.
		Rabbi Kaplan was born in New York City and was educated in the Torah Voda'as and Mir Yeshivos in Brooklyn.
	www.eilatgordinlevitan.com /kurenets/k_pages/kaplan.html (1101 words)

	Mordecai M. Kaplan and Process Theology: Metaphysical and Pragmatic Perspectives
		Mordecai M Kaplan (1881-1983), one of the major figures in contemporary Jewish thought and founder of the Reconstructionist movement in Judaism, exerted a profound impact on Jewish theology in the twentieth century.’ Kaplan’s major contribution to Jewish theology is his theory of transnaturalism.
		Kaplan sees the wisdom of God’s laws manifested in the polarity of independence and interdependence in nature: "the universal law of polarity whereby everything in the universe, from the minutest electron to the vastest star, is both self-active and inter-active, independent and interdependent" (REN 34, 35).
		Kaplan maintains that God is the creative process which transforms the chaos of the universe into an organic whole: "Nature is infinite chaos, with all its evils forever being vanquished by creativity, which is God as infinite goodness" (REN 51).
	www.religion-online.org /showarticle.asp?title=2816 (3672 words)

	Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983), The Joseph and Miriam Ratner Center (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Professor Mordecai Kaplan, with colleagues on the faculty, at commencement, 1963.
		Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983), long-time Seminary professor (1910-1963) and dean of its Teachers Institute (1909-1946), rabbi, educator and founder of the Reconstructionist movement, was born June 11, 1881 in Swenziany, Lithuania.
		Kaplan received his BA from the City College of New York, 1900; ordination from The Jewish Theological Seminary, 1902; an MA from Columbia University, 1902; semichah (rabbinic ordination) from Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines of Lida, Russia, 1908; and a DHL from the Seminary.
	www.jtsa.edu /research/ratner/conrec/pp_kaplanmordecailecture.shtml (460 words)

	l e a r n @ j t s READING OPPORTUNITIES Conservative Judaism Chap 5 Part 3 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		MORDECAI KAPLAN (1881-1983) was ordained in 1902 on the eve of Solomon Schechter's assumption of the Seminary's presidency.
		Kaplan refused to believe that a human community could evolve salvational visions and implement them in the course of its life experience without there being some power or impulse within the human community and within the world at large that guarantees the fulfillment of those visions.
		Kaplan was instrumental in creating this institution, which until recently was identified as the West Coast school of the Seminary.
	learn.jtsa.edu /topics/reading/bookexc/gillman_conservativej/chap5/part3.shtml (2064 words)

	The Bulletin Archive 27> (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Mordecai Kaplan (1881-1983), the great religious thinker and founder of the Reconstructionist movement in Judaism, was born in Lithuania.
		While continuing to teach at JTS for five decades, Kaplan edited and translated the writings of Moses Luzzatto (an 18th century poet and kabbalist), published essays on Hermann Cohen (a 19th century German philosopher), and founded The Reconstructionist magazine in 1935, a periodical which espoused his evolving liberal philosophy.
		Rabbi Kaplan perceived that the "religious" nature of Judaism could be seen through this unique concept of "civilization." He believed that Jewish civilization expressed its genius by clarifying the purposes and values of human existence, in wrestling with God, and in the ritual of the home, synagogue, and community.
	www.emanuelnyc.org /bulletin/archive/28.html (425 words)

	Books In Review: Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century
		Kaplan kept the dietary laws, not out of any commitment to their divine origin, but out of a sense of comfort with a distinctive Jewish folkway.
		Kaplan's religious behavior, hovering uneasily between attachment to old ethno- religious practices and a skeptical sensibility, could be truly bizarre.
		Kaplan's daring reinterpretation of Judaism as a civilization-which thrilled the sociologically attuned generation of the 20s, 30s, and 40s and was institutionalized by his followers in the form of the Reconstructionist movement-had little resonance for post-World War II Jews in search of transcendence.
	www.leaderu.com /ftissues/ft9403/reviews/grossman.html (1201 words)

	MyJewishLearning.com - History & Community: Reconstructionist Judaism
		Kaplan believed in the urgency of “reconstructing” Judaism precisely because of the radical dislocations in Jewish life as a result of the Enlightenment, the political emancipation of the Jewish people, and modern technological advances.
		Kaplan instead argued that all peoples and civilizations had equal access to the divine, and he was willing to embrace the belief that non-Jews could also operate as transmitters of religious ideals.
		Kaplan’s daughter Judith had the first bat mitzvah in America (in 1922), and Kaplan firmly believed that “The Jewish woman must demand the equality due her as a right to which she is fully entitled.” One of the first graduates of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College was Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, who achieved rabbinic ordination in 1974.
	www.myjewishlearning.com /history_community/Modern/ModernReligionCulture/MoreEmergence/Reconstructionism.htm (1170 words)

	Mordecai Kaplan: Prophet of Pragmatic Theology
		Mordecai Kaplan finds the pragmatic and modernist spirit which he learned in America to be at the heart of Judaism as expressed in the Bible (found in a good translation, like the Jerusalem Bible, which reflects the best of higher criticism and modern scholarship).
		Kaplan has not time for what he calls mysticism (he mentioned Heschel and Buber by name in his reproach), because to him it is inimical to an ultimate reality which is constantly becoming, constantly encountered in the midst of responsible human action.
		Kaplan can help us to learn what that means; he can help us to understand that the catholicity of the biblical tradition is not an abstract Greek universal, but a concrete Hebraic wholeness that is universal in its implications.
	www.religion-online.org /showarticle.asp?title=1811 (2091 words)

	Rabbi Scheinerman's Home Page - Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan
		Mordecai Kaplan was born in Lithuania in 1881, just as the big wave of immigration to America was getting underway.
		Kaplan was profoundly influenced by the new social science of sociology and recent progress in the physical sciences.
		Kaplan did not understand God as a supernatural force in the universe, but rather as the power which makes possible personal salvation, which Kaplan understand as the "worthwhileness of life." "God is the sum of all the animating organizing forces and relationships which are forever making a cosmos out of chaos," Kaplan wrote.
	scheinerman.net /judaism/personalities/kaplan.html (644 words)

	Lev Shalem Press: 2/8/02
		In Israel, Kaplan, one of the outstanding philosophers and leaders of American Jewry in the 20th century, is known only to those who are engaged in the study of Jewish philosophy or of American Jewry.
		Moreover, as the mitzvot were, in Kaplan's view, only an expression of human values, as determined at a specific time, and could therefore change as values change, he did not feel himself obligated even to the cautious rules for development of halakha [the body of Jewish religious law] in the Conservative outlook.
		Kaplan set forth his views in a journal called "Reconstructionists" that he founded in 1935, and from which the name of the movement was eventually derived.
	www.mindspring.com /~brownstev/reconisrael2002.htm (1749 words)

	Mordecai Kaplan: Jewish atheist : religious atheism
		Mordecai Menahem Kaplan was born in Lithuania [in 1881] and brought to the United States at the age of eight.
		Kaplan's premises are essentially the same as Kallen's, though he is far more involved in religion.
		Many of the specific ideas which Kaplan upholds -- like his denial of the orthodox concepts of revelation and of the "chosen people," or his affirmation of a theology which is a Jewish version of the "social gospel" -- can be denied, without destroying his Zionist stance.
	www.darkfiber.com /atheisms/atheisms/kaplan.html (784 words)

	Untitled Document (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		The critics of Mordecai Kaplan's philosophic efforts were persistent in their accusations of his purported neglect of metaphysics.
		Kaplan's soterics is the study of the nature and method of achieving this end.
		It is Kaplan's belief that soterics can be a framework for salvation for all people regardless of varying personal viewpoints, because it is based on two elemental and compulsory factors in human nature itself: the will to live, and its corollary the will to maximum life.
	www.vbs.org /rabbi/hshulw/kaplan_bot.htm (3918 words)

	B'nai Havurah - Mordechai Kaplan (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Kaplan defined Judaism as "the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish People." Evolving: as he demonstrates, Judaism has always evolved, from the biblical phase to rabbinic to modern.
		Kaplan rejected the concept of the “choseness” of the Jews, claiming that the Jewish vocation as well as the vocation of all self-identified groups, leads us to a specific path to self-realization through the development and expression of our inherited traditions.
		Kaplan’s influence on Judaism, especially in North America has been widespread, especially in regard to the status of women, and democratizing and equalizing congregational and community life in general.
	www.bnaihavurah.org /Kaplan/Kaplan2.htm (432 words)

	[No title]
		Kaplan was critical of Orthodoxy for failing to keep up with the times and for therefore not being able to satisfy contemporary spiritual needs.
		Kaplan was considered to be so talented as a preacher and teacher that, despite the fact that he had made it known that he did not consider himself Orthodox, he was chosen in 1918 to be rabbi of the Jewish Center, a new Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan's chic Upper West Side.
		Indeed, when Kaplan did finally resign on January 16, 1922, a number of his supporters from the Jewish Center followed him, so that on the very next day the Society for the Advancement of Judaism was founded (just one block east of the Jewish Center), and on the very next Shabbat, services were held there.
	www.h-net.org /~judaic/reviews/weinberger (890 words)

	Mordecai Kaplan (1881-1984)
		Kaplan’s version of pragmatism judges concepts by how useful they are to the Jewish civilization, and much of his thought is directed towards the American Jewish community.
		Kaplan’s concern is to see how the organism must adapt so that it may continue to flourish in the face of the forces it confronts.
		Kaplan’s view is that things are to be judged to the extent that they are useful for the Jewish civilization.
	udel.edu /~dsilver/Phil208/Kaplan.html (1072 words)

	Mordecai Kaplan's Diary and the Search for Meaning
		Kaplan appears to us as a very modern Jew primarily because in his ideology he seeks to translate traditional modes and concepts into contemporary categories.
		But I would maintain that Kaplan is modern in another sense: He is without question one of the greatest Jewish diarists who ever lived, and his diary bears witness to the very contemporary struggle to create a self.
		Mel Scult is editor of Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan (2001) and author of Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century, A Biography of Mordecai Kaplan (1993.
	www.jrf.org /rt/diaries.html (2171 words)

	Judaism FAQs
		Reconstructionism was developed by Rabbis Mordecai Menahem Kaplan (1881–1983) and Ira Eisenstein during the 1930s/40s, and formally became a separate denomination with the foundation of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Seminary in 1968.
		Kaplan wrote that "to believe in God means to take for granted that it is man's destiny to rise above the brute and to eliminate all forms of violence and exploitation from human society." Most Reconstructionist Jews reject traditional forms of theism, and instead define themselves as naturalists or humanists.
		Mordecai Kaplan instead posits a unqiue definition of this term: "Revelation consists in disengaging from the traditional context those elements in it which answer permanent postulates of human nature, and in integrating them into our own ideology...the rest may be relegated to archaeology." ("The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion").
	groups.msn.com /judaismfaqs/ReconstructionistJudaism.msnw (1395 words)

	Encore Archive: Seymour Siegel, Mordecai M. Kaplan, z"l
		Mordecai M. Kaplan was fearless and unconventional in his dying as he was in his extraordinary life.
		Kaplan's answer is embodied in his famous formula -- Judaism is a civilization.
		Kaplan proposed a total revolution in our theology by accepting the postulates of naturalism and denying that there was supernature.
	www.clal.org /e110.html (812 words)

	j. - First bat mitzvah, Judith Kaplan Eisenstein, dies at 86
		Kaplan Eisenstein, who was also a noted authority on Jewish music as well as a composer and lyricist, died Wednesday of a heart attack at age 86 while in a Rockville, Md., hospital recovering from a broken hip.
		In 1934, Kaplan Eisenstein married her father's closest disciple, Ira Eisenstein, who was working as Kaplan's assistant rabbi at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism.
		Kaplan Eisenstein taught music at that Reform movement seminary and at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, which was founded by her husband in Philadelphia in 1968.
	www.jewishsf.com /content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/3036/edition_id/53/format/html/displaystory.html (866 words)

	D'Var Chinuch--February 27, 1999
		Kaplan dwells on the humility of Moses, who repeatedly protested to God that he was unworthy to be His messenger and the leader of the Jews.
		Kaplan punctures the arrogant idea often associated with the chosen people concept that "the Jews are chosen to deliver God's word to the rest of mankind" by recounting the story of Abraham Lincoln's visit from a group of Chicago clergymen at the beginning of the Civil War.
		We can heed Kaplan's warnings against arrogance yet also emulate his colleague Heschl, who retained a belief that we are a chosen people but studied the Torah and Prophets with Christian leaders such as Martin Luther King and Pope John XXIII in a way that invigorated the strivings of all towards greater justice and respect.
	www.adatshalom.net /dvarchin/max.html (1916 words)

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