Mordecai Kaplan's Impact On Judaism

Mordecai Kaplan, the “founder” of Reconstructionist Judaism, could be referred to as the most important Jewish scholar of the twentieth century. His revolutionary ideas in Judaism as a Civilization and The Reconstructionist echo still today, due to the way he challenged ideas of what it meant to be Jewish and what that meant for the modern Jewish population worldwide. According to Mel Scult, a professor emeritus of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, Mordecai Kaplan identified as “profoundly American,”3 despite being born in what is now Lithuania but was part of tsarist Russia in 1881, at the time of Kaplan’s birth. However, he moved to New York at the age of eight, where he stayed for a majority of his life. Kaplan became a rabbi in 1902, and he remained a rabbi at an Orthodox synagogue in NY until 1909, when he joined the Dean of Teachers Institutes of Seminary. He remained a professor of the Seminary for over fifty years, but began his organization of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in 1922 under the belief that a congregation in a synagogue should
His ideas were centered strongly on the basis that Jewishness transcends belief in God, as was shown through his encouragement of recreational activities in synagogues. As mentioned previously, Kaplan promoted activities besides worship in synagogues, and he encouraged education, drama, dance, song, and exercise programs to be held as synagogues as well1. This gave definition to Reconstructionist Judaism as the adaptation of Jewish civilization to the modern times. Reconstructionist Jews don’t undermine the authority of history, but rather they acknowledge their past as suggestions and ways to understand God, not as a rulebook. Compared to Orthodox Judaism, Reconstructionists believe that Judaism is an “ever-evolving product of history, an ongoing attempt to forge a society based on holy values,” not as upholding an unchanged covenant with