Editing Mordecai Kaplan (section)

==Life and work==
Mordecai Menahem Kaplan was born '''Mottel Kaplan''' in Sventiany in the [[Russian Empire]] (present-day [[Švenčionys]] in Lithuania) on June 11, 1881,<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="Scult2020">{{cite book |last1=Scult |first1=Mel |title=Communings of the Spirit, Volume III: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan, 1942-1951 |date=October 2020 |publisher=Wayne State University Press |isbn=978-0-8143-4768-3 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WXvTDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT374 |chapter=Timeline of Kaplan's Life}}</ref> the son of Haya (née Anna) and Rabbi Israel Kaplan.<ref name="JVL"/> His father, ordained by the leading [[Lithuanian Jews|Lithuanian Jewish]] luminaries, went to serve as a [[Dayan (rabbinic judge)|dayan]] in the court of Chief Rabbi [[Jacob Joseph]] in New York City in 1888.<ref name="Scult2002">{{cite book |last1=Scult |first1=Mel |title=Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan, 1913-1934 |date=May 2002 |publisher=Wayne State University Press |isbn=978-0-8143-3116-3 |pages=45–55 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RY5EHLth6TQC&pg=PA45}}</ref><ref name="Kraut1998">{{cite journal |last1=Kraut |first1=Benny |title=Review of A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism |journal=American Jewish History |date=1998 |volume=86 |issue=3 |pages=357–363 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23886287 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |jstor=23886287 |issn=0164-0178}}</ref> Mordecai was brought over to New York in 1889, at the age of nine.<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="Times Obituary"/><ref name="Scult2020"/>

Although affiliated with the most traditional Orthodox institutions and personalities in the [[Lower East Side]], his father persisted in non-conformist openness to trends he had already exhibited in Russia: He hosted discussions in his home with maverick [[Hebrew Bible|Bible]] critic [[Arnold Ehrlich]],<ref name="Scult2002"/> withdrew his son from the [[Etz Chaim Yeshiva (Manhattan)|Etz Chaim Yeshiva]], enrolled him in public school, and later sent him to JTS to pursue studies to become a modern Orthodox rabbi. Although not the norm amongst first-generation immigrants, who tended to be very conservative and traditional, his father was not alone in this kind of religious broad-mindedness.<ref name="Kraut1998"/> Kaplan's early education was strictly Orthodox, but, by the time he reached secondary school, he had been attracted to heterodox opinions (particularly regarding the critical approach to the Bible).<ref name="JVL"/> To counter this, his father hired a tutor to study [[Maimonides|Maimonides’s]] ''[[Guide for the Perplexed]]'' with Mordecai.<ref name="Scult2002"/>

In 1893, Kaplan began studying for ordination at the [[Jewish Theological Seminary of America|Jewish Theological Seminary]] (JTS),<ref name="Scult2020"/> which, at that time, was a [[Modern Orthodox]] institution founded to strengthen Orthodoxy and combat the hegemony of the Reform movement. In 1895, he also began studies at the [[City College of New York]] (CCNY),<ref name="Scult2020"/> which he attended in the morning, while going to JTS in the evening.<ref name="Scult2002" /> After graduating from CCNY in 1900, he went to [[Columbia University]] to study philosophy, sociology, and education, and received a master's degree and doctorate. Majoring in philosophy, he wrote his master's thesis on the ethical philosophy of [[Henry Sidgwick]].<ref name="Scult2020"/> His lecturers included the philosopher of [[Ethical movement|ethical culture]] [[Felix Adler (professor)|Felix Adler]] and the sociologist [[Franklin Henry Giddings|Franklin Giddings]].<ref>For a biography of Kaplan's life consult, Mel Scult Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century- A Biography of Mordecai M. Kaplan, Wayne State University Press, 1993 {{ISBN|0-8143-2279-4}}</ref><ref name="Scult2002"/>

In 1902, he was ordained at the JTS.<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="Times Obituary"/><ref name="Scult2020"/> Although Kaplan's conception of the nature of Judaism diverged from that of the seminary, he maintained a long association with the institution, teaching there for over fifty years; including becoming principal of its teachers’ institute in 1909, dean in 1931, and retiring in 1963.<ref name="Britannica"/> In 1903 he was appointed as administrator of the religious school at [[Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun]] (KJ), a gradually modernizing Orthodox synagogue in New York's [[Yorkville, Manhattan|Yorkville]] district consisting of newly affluent and acculturating East European Jews who had migrated north from the Lower East Side. By April 1904, he was appointed as rabbi of the congregation.<ref name="Kraut1998"/>

Based on his diary, by around this time (1904, age 23), Kaplan already had serious misgivings about Orthodoxy's ability to satisfy his spiritual needs and its unwillingness to modernize. By 1905, he noted doubt in the divine origin of the Bible and its laws as well as the efficacy of prayers and rituals; by 1907 he had informed his parents of his feelings. As he was already serving as a rabbi at this point, this created a high degree of dissonance resulting in considerable internal turmoil and anguish over the hypocrisy of practicing and preaching that which he no longer believed.<ref name="Kraut1998"/>  His private diaries and papers reveal that he was tortured within because his beliefs about the nature of religion and of Judaism conflicted with his duties as the leader of an Orthodox congregation.<ref name="Scult2002"/>

In 1908, he married Lena Rubin, left KJ, and was [[Semikhah|ordained as a rabbi]] by Rabbi [[Yitzchak Yaacov Reines|Isaac Jacob Reines]] while on his honeymoon in Europe.<ref name="Scult2020"/><ref name="JVL"/><ref name="Scult2002"/>

In 1909, Kaplan became principal of the newly formed teacher's institute at JTS (which was now Conservative), a position he would keep until he retired in 1963.<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="Times Obituary"/><ref name="Scult2020"/> Kaplan was not primarily interested in academic scholarship; but rather in teaching future rabbis and educators to reinterpret Judaism and make Jewish identity meaningful under modern circumstances.<ref name="JVL"/> As a result, his work during this time contributed greatly to the future of Jewish education in America.<ref name="Scult2002"/>

Even those who disagreed with his views appreciated his direct approach. They were impressed by his emphasis on intellectual honesty in confronting the challenges posed by modern thought to traditional Jewish beliefs and practices. In his approach to [[midrash]] and [[Philosophy of religion|philosophies of religion]], Kaplan combined scientific scholarship with creative application of the texts to contemporary problems. Kaplan's Reconstructionist philosophy influenced not only his own immediate students, but through them, his extensive writings, and public lectures over several decades, the American Jewish community at large. Many of his ideas, such as Judaism as a civilization (and not merely a religion or nationality); [[Bar and bat mitzvah|bat mitzvah]]; egalitarian involvement of women in synagogal and communal life; the synagogue as a Jewish center and not merely a place of worship; and living as Jews in a multicultural society, eventually came to be accepted as commonplace and implemented in all but strictly Orthodox segments of the community.<ref name="JVL"/>

Early in his career, Kaplan became a devotee of the scientific and historical study of the Bible. He was the leading educator to confront rabbis, teachers, and laity with the changes in Jewish thought that had become necessary once the Bible had been exposed to modern techniques of examination and interpretation. But far from denigrating the genius of the biblical text, Kaplan taught his students to regard it as an indispensable source for an understanding of [[Jewish peoplehood]] and Jewish civilization.<ref name="JVL"/>

In 1912, he was an advisor to the creators of the [[Young Israel]] movement of [[Modern Orthodox Judaism]], together with Rabbi [[Israel Friedlander]].<ref name=KaplanYoungIsrael>For Kaplan founding Young Israel, see:
*S. Daniel Breslauer (1994). ''Mordecai Kaplan's Thought In a Postmodern Age''. Scholars Press. p. 25.
*[[Daniel J. Elazar|Daniel Judah Elazar]] (1995). ''Community and Polity: The Organizational Dynamics of American Jewry''. [[Jewish Publication Society]]. p. 133.
*[[Daniel J. Elazar|Daniel Judah Elazar]], Rela M. Geffen (2000). ''The Conservative Movement in Judaism: Dilemmas and Opportunities''. [[State University of New York Press]]. p. 24.
*Bernard Melvin Lazerwitz (1998). ''Jewish Choices: American Jewish Denominationalism''. [[State University of New York Press]]. p. 19.
*Benny Kraut, "Jewish Survival in Protestant American", in [[Jonathan D. Sarna]] (ed.) (1998). ''Minority Faiths and the American Protestant Mainstream''. [[University of Illinois Press]]. p. 33.
*{{cite EJ|first=Jeanette|last=Freidman|title=Young Israel|volume=21|page=402}}</ref>{{refn| According to Kraut (1998), Kaplan "worked for the Young Israel initiative that in conception was nondenominational..."<ref name="Kraut1998"/>}}

In speeches and articles in 1912 and 1916 he chided American Orthodox Judaism for not adequately embracing modernity.<ref name="Kraut1998"/>

He was a leader in creating the [[Jewish Community Center|Jewish community center]] concept. Around 1916-1918 he organized the [[Jewish Center (Manhattan)|Jewish Center in New York]], a community organization with a Modern Orthodox synagogue as its nucleus, the first of its kind in the United States, and was its rabbi until 1922.<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="Scult2020"/><ref name="Scult2002"/><ref name="JVL"/>

Kaplan's ideology and rhetoric had been evolving, over the decade, but it was not until 1920 that he finally took a clear and irrevocable stand, criticizing "the fundamental doctrine of Orthodoxy, which is that tradition is infallible... The doctrine of infallibility rules out of court all research and criticism and demands implicit faith in the truth of whatever has come down from the past. It precludes all conscious development in thought and practice..."<ref name="Goldsmith1992">{{cite book |last1=Goldsmith |first1=Emanuel |last2=Scult |first2=Mel |last3=Seltzer |first3=Robert M. |title=The American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan |date=October 1992 |publisher=NYU Press |isbn=978-0-8147-3052-2 |page=83 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_2sVCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA83}}</ref><ref name="Scult2002"/> However, he was even more critical of Reform, saying that Reform was worse due to what he called Reform's "absolute break with the Judaism of the past".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mendes-Flohr |first1=Paul R. |last2=Reinharz |first2=Jehuda |title=The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History |date=1995 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-507453-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0Bu5GnLZCw0C&pg=PA499}}</ref>

Yet he still remained the Rabbi of the center until around 1922, when he resigned due to these ideological conflicts with the some of lay leadership. He, along with a sizeable group of congregants, then established the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, which later became the core of the Reconstructionist movement.<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="Scult2020"/><ref name="Scult2002"/><ref name="JVL"/>

He held the first public celebration of a [[bat mitzvah]] in the United States, for his daughter [[Judith Kaplan Eisenstein|Judith Kaplan]], on March 18, 1922, at the [[Society for the Advancement of Judaism]], his synagogue in New York City.<ref name=autogenerated1>{{cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/firstbat.html |title=The First American Bat Mitvah |publisher=Jewishvirtuallibrary.org |date=1922-03-18 |access-date=2013-04-13}}
</ref><ref name="Scult2020"/><ref name="Times Obituary"/><ref name="BatMitvah">
* {{cite book |last1=Golinkin |first1=David |editor-last1=Helman |editor-first1=Anat |title=No Small Matter: Features of Jewish Childhood |date=2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-757732-5 |page=198 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o-MmEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA198 |chapter=The Transformation of the Bar Mitzvah Ceremony, 1800–2020 |doi=10.1093/oso/9780197577301.003.0012}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last1=Hyman |first1=Paula E. |last2=Balin |first2=Carole B. |encyclopedia=Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia |title=Bat Mitzvah: American Jewish Women |year=2021 |publisher=Jewish Women's Archive |url=https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bat-mitzvah-american-jewish-women}}
* {{cite web |last1=Waskow |first1=Arthur O. |title=History of Bat Mitzvah |url=https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/history-of-bat-mitzvah/ |website=My Jewish Learning}}
</ref> Judith [[Torah reading|read from the Torah]] at this ceremony, a role that had traditionally been reserved for males.<ref name=autogenerated1 /><ref name="Greenspahn2009">
{{cite book |last1=Greenspahn |first1=Frederick E. |title=Women and Judaism: New Insights and Scholarship |date=November 2009 |publisher=New York University Press |isbn=978-0-8147-3218-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YWlS9iomfAMC&pg=PA158}}
</ref>

In 1925, the American Zionist Organization sent Kaplan to Jerusalem as its official representative for the opening of [[Hebrew University]].<ref name="Scult2020"/>

From 1934 until 1970 Kaplan wrote a series of books in which he expressed his Reconstructionist ideology, which was an attempt to adapt Judaism to modern-day realities that Kaplan believed created the necessity for a new conception of God. His basic ideology was first defined in his 1934 work ''Judaism as a Civilization: Toward the Reconstruction of American-Jewish Life''. In 1935 a biweekly periodical (''[[The Reconstructionist Journal|The Reconstructionist]]'') was started under Kaplan's editorship, which adopted the following credo: “Dedicated to the advancement of Judaism as a religious civilization, to the upbuilding of Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] as the spiritual center of the Jewish People, and to the furtherance of universal freedom, justice, and peace.” Kaplan further refined the goals of his ideology in subsequent books including: ''The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion'' (1937), ''Judaism Without Supernaturalism'' (1958), and ''The Religion of Ethical Nationhood'' (1970).<ref name="Britannica"/>

Kaplan saw his ideology as a "school of thought" rather than a separate denomination, and in fact resisted pressure to turn it into one, fearing that it might further fragment the American Jewish community, and hoping that his ideas could be applied to all denominations.<ref name="JVL"/><ref name="Scult2002"/>

Kaplan was dissatisfied with traditional rituals and prayer, and sought to find ways to make them more meaningful to modern Jews. In, 1941 he wrote a controversial Reconstructionist [[Haggadah]], for which he received criticism from colleagues at JTS.<ref name="Scult2002"/> However, he this did not stop him from publishing the Reconstructionist Sabbath Prayer Book 1945, in which, among other unorthodoxies, he denied the literal accuracy of the biblical text.<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="Scult2002"/> As a result, he was excommunicated by the [[Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada]],<ref name="Britannica"/><ref name="Scult2020"/> who held a herem ceremony at which his prayer book was burned.<ref name="Scult2002"/><ref name="Greenspahn2009"/><ref name="silver"/>

Although Kaplan preferred Reconstructionism remain a non-denominational school of thought rather than a separate denomination, in the late 40s to early 50s a number of laymen in synagogues throughout the United States decided to organize an independent federation of Reconstructionist synagogues,<ref name="JVL"/> and by 1954 the [[Jewish Reconstructionist Federation|Federation of Reconstructionist Congregations and Havurot]] was organized. As the years passed, the number of affiliates grew, but it was not until the late 1960s, that the movement actually became a separate denomination, when the [[Reconstructionist Rabbinical College]] opened its doors in 1968.<ref name="Scult2002"/> By the beginning of the 21st century it would include over 100 congregations and havurot.<ref name="JVL"/>

Kaplan was a prolific writer. In addition to his published works, he kept a journal from 1913 until the late 1970s, with 27 volumes, each with 350 - 400 handwritten pages. The journal is certainly the largest by a Jew, and may even be one of the most extensive on record.<ref name="Scult2002"/>

After the death of his wife in 1958, he married Rivka Rieger, an Israeli artist, in 1959.<ref name="Scult2020"/> He died in New York City in 1983 at the age of 102.<ref name="Times Obituary"/> He was survived by Rivka and his daughters Dr. [[Judith Kaplan Eisenstein|Judith Eisenstein]], [[Hadassah Musher]], Dr. [[Naomi Wenner]] and [[Selma Jaffe-Goldman]]; as well as seven grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.<ref name="Times Obituary"/>