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Discussion Guide for the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Havurah
Book: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization
Facilitator: Benjy Ben-Baruch
Overall Critique:
Impressions from and reactions to Kaplan’s Judaism as a
Civilization worth spending time thinking about critically
What surprised you the most in a good way?
What surprised you the most in a negative way? (Ideas or statements with which you
disagreed or found to be problematic)
What is core to the work and what are polemics?
This work is considered radical, revolutionary, pathbreaking, seminal. Did it feel that way to
you? Do you understand why it was considered so in 1934?
What seem to be MMK’s purposes in writing this book? Who are his audiences? Are you
part of his audience?
What is the problem MMK is solving for?
 Did he define a real problem?
 If so, is this still a problem?
What is his solution?
 Is it a solution for the problem(s) he defined?
 Is it a relevant solution today?
What can we learn from this work? What relevance does it have for us today? What are the
ideas and nuggets that we want to inform our own thoughts, ideas, beliefs, practices?
“Important” books inspire public conversations and debates which can continue for many
years. Formal and informal groups inspired by these conversations often take on a
life of their own as “schools of thought”, intellectual movements, social movements,
“corresponding socieities”, etc.
 What was it about this book that inspired such conversations? How much do you
think was due to the power of Kaplan’s ideas and how much due to the time and
place of publication?
 What conversations do you want to engage in with the book?
What aspects of the book are you most interested in critiquing?
 Which parts of Kaplan’s core ideas were most attractive and which bothered you
the most?
 Which parts of Kaplan’s polemics were most attractive and which bothered you
the most?
 Are your feelings toward the work reactions to the problems in his core ideas,
polemics, or something else (e.g. his underlying assumptions or basic philosphical
approaches)?
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Benjy’s notes to guide discussion of Mordecai Kaplan’s Judaism as a Civilization
Adar-Nissan 5770 / Feb-March 2010
How much do the flaws in the work affect your overall appreciation of this radical thinker?
 Which flaws are these?
 Are they central to either his main ideas or to the program of change that he
advocates or are they relevant primarily to the polemics of his argument?
Did reading MMK make you feel proud to be a Reconstructionist or cause you to question
whether you are really a Reconstructionist?
Many Reconstructionists have felt that the term “Reconstructionist” might have been a good
term to describe the early members of the school of thought that coalesced around
Kaplan but is a lousy name for the movement as it exists today. What would be a
better term? (“Renewal” and “reform” have been taken by kindred movements.)
(Kaplan himself uses the term “Religious-Culturist” on p.312.)
To what extent do you see the impact of Kaplan’s ideas in:
 Your understanding of Judaism
 Your practice of Judaism
 The Havurah
In what areas would you want to see more – or less – impact of Kaplan’s ideas?
What aspects of the book are you most interested in critiquing? Which parts of Kaplan’s
core ideas bothered you the most? Which parts of Kaplan’s polemics bothered you
the most? Are your feelings toward the work reactions to the problems in his core
ideas, polemics, or something else (e.g. his underlying assumptions or basic
philosphical approaches)?
Are you a Kaplanite? If so, what do you mean by this? If not, why not? What bothers you
about Kaplan’s approach?
Topical Critique:
Ideas in Kaplan’s Judaism as a Civilization worth spending
time thinking about critically
Kaplan’s basic idea that Judaism is a civilization
The idea of living in two civilizations
Kaplan’s Theology
Kaplan’s Zionism and the role and importance of Erez Israel
Kaplan’s Sociology
Kaplan’s critique of the other movements
Kaplan’s concrete suggestions regarding
 Jewish communal organization
 Liturgy
 Education
 Arts, Literature, Music
 Education
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Benjy’s notes to guide discussion of Mordecai Kaplan’s Judaism as a Civilization
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General Notes and Background:
Kaplan is writing in 1934. The following characterizes the American Jewish community:
 It is still largely an immigrant working-class community highly concentrated in a few
urban areas, esp. in the New York/New Jersey area but with organizational roots in the
earlier mid-19thc German Jewish community which includes prominent Jewish financiers
and merchants and manufacturers. There is a vibrant Jewish press including Yiddish
daily newspapers [pl. sic!]. Class divisions are one of several important cross-cutting
internal divisions.
 The Reform movement and its Hebrew Union College in Cincinnatti and the Union of
American Hebrew Congregations are fairly well established at this time (in contrast to
other Jewish religious institutions). (Kaplan heads the Teachers Institute at the Jewish
Theological Seminary, teaches homiletics to all rabbinical students there, and is the
pulpit rabbi at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism.)
 Jewish institutions are emerging somewhat haphazardly with competing notions of
whether Jewish communities should be “organized” and, if so, how? (People may
remember that as late as the late 1980s there was still vigorous opposition to creating a
Jewish federation in Ann Arbor.)
 Strongly influential intellectual trends include Enlightenment, Science, Social Science,
Socialism (incl. Communism, Socialism, Social Democracy, etc.), Humanism,
Democracy, the social sciences (history, sociology, poltical economy/economics, etc.),
secularism, Democracy
 Hitler has recently come to power (1933) – but the Nuremburg Laws (1935) have not yet
been passed.
 The Zionist movement is a presence in Jewish life but still rejected by the majority of the
Jewish community.
1. The Zionist movement had been dominated primarily by the “general Zionists”, i.e.
the Zionist parties representing the Jewish petite bourgeoisie.
2. The fascists and right-wing nationalists (i.e. Revisionists) and socialist Zionists are
competing for dominance. Within a year, the fascists will be forced to leave the
Zionist Organization and the socialists will become hegemonic (within the ZO) until
some time between 1964 and 1977 when a coalition of religious parties, the formerly
anti-Zionist clericalist parties, and the right-wing nationalists and fascists become the
dominant forces in Israeli politics.
3. For most Zionists in Europe and the US, Zionist activity actually revolves around
activism within their diaspora community agitating for acceptance of the Zionist
program and for democratization of the Jewish community and the creation of nonhierarchical structures. “Being a Zionist” means supporting the Jewish project in
Palestine as part of transforming organized Jewish life. At the individual level, the
Zionist project in Palestine was supported with donations but most “activism”
involved activities geared to revolutionizing the nature of the Jewish communities.
 Jewish life in much of Europe is marked by
1. The upheavals and dislocations of WWI
2. The challenges of reorienting itself to the new nations and nationalisms created after
WWI
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3. divisions among Jewish political parties which operate in both the formal Jewish
communities and in some cases at the national levels. The Zionist movement is
divided into a confedaration of competing political parties. There are also Orthodox
political parties that reject Zionism and its secularist nationalism.
 Relevant to MMK’s discussion of Jewish Education: Most Jews (in Europe and
America) did not learn Hebrew! Most Jews were receiving only elementary Jewish
educations. They learned Yiddish and, with the Yiddish alphabet, learned to decode
Hebrew. Knowledge of Hebrew” tended to be rote memorization, not language learning.
When Kaplan proposed learning Hebrew as a living vernacular, he was proposing a very
radical idea.
1. First, he was presuming that the Zionist movement would be successful and that
Hebrew would become a living language again. This was not a “given” in 1934.
2. Secondly, he was proposing that Hebrew and not Yiddish be taught.
3. Thirdly, he was proposing that Hebrew be taught as a language rather than the
teaching-by-rote of trtaditional texts. This was true in both Europe and America.
4. Finally, his audience understood him to mean that Hebrew should be taught using the
Palestinian-Sefardi pronunciation favored by Zionists and not the Ashkenazi
pronunciation familiar to and insisted upon by the (Ashkenazi) Orthodox
communities.
 In contrast to the Jewish community most of us are familiar with, the following has not
yet happened:
1. The first Reconstructionist “alternative liturgy” (The New Haggadah and then the
Sabbath prayer book) have not yet been published.
2. WWII (1939) and the Holocaust (1939/41-1945) are still a few years in the future.
3. The Biltmore platform of the ZO in which, for the first time (1942), the Zionist
movement states that its political goal is a Jewish state (and not merely a “national
homeland” or autonomous polity)
4. The State of Israel has not been established
5. The “right-wing” of the Reform movement changes the nature of this movement
influenced by its leaders who were influenced by Kaplan, Zionism, and people
influenced by them. (These changes, esp. the overt opposition to Zionism, are
typically dated as beginning with the 1937 Columbus Platform and then the election
in 1945 of the Zionist leader, Abba Hillel Silver, as president of the CCAR.)
 Three major upheavals in American Jewish life and communal organization have not yet
happened:
1. Establishment of the State of Israel led by the socialist Zionist parties in coalition
with a Zionist Orthodox party (originally recognized by both the US and Soviet
Union and “non-aligned”)
2. The post-war changes including entry into the professions and middle classes,
expansion of synagogues, widespread acceptance of centralized federated Jewish
communal structures, etc. Included among these upheavals is the emergence in 1954?
of a coalition of 4? Conservative and Reform synagogues into the Reconstructionist
Federation of Congregations.
3. The 1967 war, the ability to begin dealing with the Holocaust, the reorganization and
pseudo-Zionization of American Jewish communal organization. Included among
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these changes is the emergence of the Federation of Reconstructionist Congregations
and Havurot and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (1968).
Bibliography/Suggested Reading:
Mordecai M. Kaplan, The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion,
Mordecai M. Kaplan, “What Judaism is Not” and “What is Judaism”, a series of two articles
in The Menorah Journal, 1:4 (October 1915), pp. 208ff. and 1:5 (December 1915),
pp. 309ff; available (as of 2010/02/08) at
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22300/22300-h/meno-4.html#Page_208 and
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22300/22300-h/meno-5.html#Page_309
Mel Scult, “Process Thinking in Kaplan and Emerson”, a short blurb published at
http://www.melscult.org/newthings/PROCESS3.htm (as of March 1, 2010). This is a
foretaste of the following:
Mel Scult, “Mordecai Kaplan and Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Theology of the Individual”,
Jewish Social Studies, Volume 12, Number 2, Winter 2006 (New Series), pp. 99-114
Mel Scult, Judaism faces the twentieth century: a biography of Mordecai M. Kaplan, Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1993
Marc Ellis, Toward a Jewish Liberation Theology, ; A different approach to Judaism and
Jewish theology which, in its own way, is very similar to Kaplan’s approach. Kaplan
says that Judaism exists for the Jewish people and that theology has to facilitate our
ability to realize self-fulfillment both as individuals and as members of larger
communities. Ellis says that the role of theology is to ask the questions a people
needs to ask in order to create their future.
Further citations and suggestions to come
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