Editing Mordecai Kaplan (section)

==Relationship with Orthodox Judaism==
Kaplan began his career as an [[Orthodox Judaism|Orthodox]] rabbi at [[Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun]] in New York City, assisted in the founding of the [[Young Israel]] movement of [[Modern Orthodox Judaism]] in 1912,<ref name=KaplanYoungIsrael/> and was the first rabbi hired by the new (Orthodox) [[Jewish Center (Manhattan, New York)|Jewish Center]] in Manhattan when it was founded in 1918. He proved too radical in his religious and political views for the organization and resigned from the Jewish Center in 1921. He was the subject of a number of polemical articles published by Rabbi [[Leo Jung]] (who became the rabbi of the Jewish Center in 1922) in the Orthodox Jewish press.

He then became involved in the [[Society for the Advancement of Judaism]], where on March 18, 1922, he held (possibly) the first public celebration of a [[Bat Mitzvah|bat mitzvah]] in America, for his daughter Judith.<ref name="Scult2020"/><ref name="Times Obituary"/><ref name="BatMitvah"/> This led to considerable criticism of Kaplan in the Orthodox Jewish press.

Kaplan's central idea of understanding Judaism as a religious civilization was an easily accepted position within [[Conservative Judaism]], but his [[Humanistic naturalism|naturalistic]] conception of [[God]] was not as acceptable. Even at the Conservative movement's JTS, as [[The Forward]] writes, "He was an outsider, and often privately considered leaving the institution. In 1941, the faculty illustrated its distaste with Kaplan by penning a unanimous letter to the professor of [[homiletics]], expressing complete disgust with Kaplan's ''The New Haggadah'' for the Passover seder. Four years later, seminary professors [[Alexander Marx]], [[Louis Ginzberg]] and [[Saul Lieberman]] went public with their rebuke by writing a letter to the Hebrew newspaper ''Hadoar'', lambasting Kaplan's prayer book and his entire career as a rabbi."<ref name="silver">Zachary Silver, "[https://forward.com/culture/3610/a-look-back-at-a-different-book-burning/ A look back at a different book burning]," ''The Forward'', June 3, 2005</ref> In 1945 the [[Union of Orthodox Rabbis]] "formally assembled to excommunicate from [[Judaism]] what it deemed to be the community's most heretical voice: Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the man who eventually would become the founder of [[Reconstructionist Judaism]]. Kaplan, a critic of both Orthodox and Reform Judaism, believed that Jewish practice should be reconciled with modern thought, a philosophy reflected in his ''Sabbath Prayer Book''..."<ref name="silver" />

Due to Kaplan's evolving position on [[Jewish philosophy|Jewish theology]] and the liturgy, he was also condemned as a heretic by members of [[Young Israel]], which he had assisted in founding. His followers attempted to induce him to formally leave Conservative Judaism, but he stayed with its Jewish Theological Seminary until he retired in 1963. Finally, in 1968, his closest disciple and son-in-law [[Ira Eisenstein]] founded a separate school, the [[Reconstructionist Rabbinical College]], in which Kaplan's philosophy, Reconstructionist Judaism, would be promoted as a separate religious movement.