May 4, 2012 / 12 Iyar, 5772

Looking into Kaplan’s Diary

Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983) was ordained at JTS and served as a member of its faculty for over fifty years. All the major leaders of the Conservative movement were his students. His ideology eventually resulted in Reconstructionism.

Religion as Government – First Installment

Kaplan is a rabbi and theologian of great standing but perhaps his greatest talent lies in the field of intellectual history and the sociology of religion. He is at his best when explaining to us how certain ideas and institutions functioned in the past. If we understand the function of these ideas we will appreciate them more in their original setting and we might be moved to try to capture the same function for ourselves.

In the passage below Kaplan talks of God and revelation and the way in which God’s relation to Israel is similar to our sense of government. Government is supposed to be the collective expression of our values and of our desire to live together in mutual harmony, peace and justice. It doesn’t always function that way but that is the ideal. In the same way, we need to think through the way in which our religion and our Torah can help us to live together and function in the best way possible. To do this would make God more present in our lives. It is fitting that we begin this series in this election year with a statement about government.

Sunday, October 11, 1936.

How did the belief that the Torah was given at Mount Sinai and that it was revealed from heaven come about? First of all, we must leave our thought world and try to penetrate the thought world of our forebears. There was a time when it was impossible to conceive of the existence of any nation without it having a god who was its father and patron, just as it is impossible for us to conceive of any nation without a government which unites it and makes it into a unit. Indeed, the concept “God” played the same role then as the concept “government” does in our time. This being so, the bond between the nation and its god existed from the time it became a nation. And because the Children of Israel believed that they had become a people before they entered the Land of Israel, they drew the conclusion that the bond existed in the wilderness where they wandered about before entering the land. Because the concept “God” filled the same function in the past as does the concept “government” for us, the result is that the basic bond between God and the nation is expressed through the statutes and laws by which it is governed. Therefore they had to attribute to God all the laws by which they lived.

In other words, where there is no information about the past based upon facts and experience, reason and imagination attempt to describe it, and that is what happened to our ancestors when they sought to shed light on the darkness of their past. This aspiration in itself has great value and does honor to our forebears. But those who are stubborn in their faith that it is impossible to conceive of the past in any way other than the imaginings of our ancestors block the path of our people’s spiritual development.

Do you find the comparison of religion to government helpful? Does it undermine or strengthen your faith in the belief that the Torah is divine? In what way?

Our government is set up by our constitution. Would it be helpful to see the Torah as the constitution of the Jewish people? Would this conflict with our loyalty as American citizens?

This week’s special commentary was written by Mel Scult, professor emeritus of Jewish thought at Brooklyn College, who received his M.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He has taught at Brandeis, Vassar College and the New School for Social Research. Scult is the author of a biography of Mordecai Kaplan, Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century, and has co-edited, with Emmanuel Goldsmith, Dynamic Judaism: The Essential Writings of Mordecai Kaplan and The American Judaism of Mordecai Kaplan. Scult is also the author of “Schechter’s Seminary,” an essay which appears inTradition Renewed: A History of JTS. He published Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan, 1913–1934 (2001). 

This story was originally published in CJ:Kolot Voices of Conservative/Masorti Judaism and won a Rockower award from the American Jewish Press Association, placing first in the personal essay category. According to the AJPA, it is “an emotionally wrenching, theologically insightful, beautifully written memoir of the author’s struggle to say Kaddish after the death of her daughter.” 

Before I ever had to say kaddish as a mourner, I was entranced by its music.

In 1934 the British writer Dorothy Sayers published The Nine Tailors, a fairly unconvincing mystery that provided a framework for a pastoral idyll. The book centered around bell-ringers who climbed up a church tower to pull the massive ropes attached to the brass behemoths that hung there. They were ringing the changes, following mathematical formulas that permitted subtle variations, playing the huge bells with paradoxical delicacy.

The kaddish is like that, I used to think before I had to say it. As we say the words, our voices ring the changes on them. As the kaddish shifts back and forth between Hebrew and Aramaic, the consonants that sound so strongly stay the same while the vowels that connect them move and flex and alter. And then the consonants change too, and the vowels begin their dance with them again. It is an incantation, I thought, hypnotic and beautiful. Surely the sound must soothe mourners as it sweeps over them.

And then, in December of 2000, my daughter Shira Palmer- Sherman died. I had to say kaddish for her. And it didn’t work. Continue reading →

The settlement movement is an existential threat to the State of Israel.  With many in Israel and the United States complacent with on-going settler activity, the expansion of settlements moves us toward a precipice.

 A two state solution is necessary for a democratic Jewish state to exist.  The alternative is a majority of the Israeli population composed of Palestinian citizens.    History has not been kind to societies with an over class and an underclass.  First they are branded “apartheid”, and then they fail.

In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, Peter Beinart advocates confronting the settlement movement in Israel with a boycott.  In Letters to the Editor, Abraham Foxman posited that such a campaign will create more anti-Israel feelings around the world.  Another letter writer felt an anti-Palestinian boycott would be more appropriate.  Even the sympathetic letter writer offered faint support.

Fran Gordon has written a thoughtful response on the Shefa website suggesting working to create a culture change in Israel.  She recommends the support of elements within Israeli society that favor the creation of a more modern democracy.  By nurturing a “middle” ground in Israeli society, the population will become prepared for a two state solution.  It’s hard to argue with Ms. Gordon’s call for positive change, but her dismissal of confronting the settler movement misses an opportunity to take difficult but necessary steps.  Beinart begins his essay by acknowledging that Israel is “caught between the jaws of a pincer”.   Gordon ends her essay by eschewing entering the jaws.  She prefers engaging in a “positive, productive conversation with the pro-Israel community”.

Were this purely an internal dispute, Ms. Gordon’s position would be true.  An introspection of Israeli and Jewish values would be correct.  In fact this is occurring now in Israel with issues such as women’s rights and the question of who is a Jew.  But an occupation of another society has changed the venue.

Jewish values call for action, when a wrong encountered.  Abraham Joshua Heschel knew that when he saw people who were not receiving equal protection under the law.  He confronted injustice by entering the jaws of a pincher.  Conversation was inadequate.  As a “pro-Israel community”, we must confront those who manipulate Israel away from a place where democracy can flourish.  Rejection of a wrong, not introspection, is needed.