Kaplan, Mordecai Menahem

Kaplan, Mordecai Menahem (môr`dĭkī' mənäkh`əm kăp`lən), 1881–1983, American rabbi, educator, and philosopher, b. Lithuania, grad. College of the City of New York, 1900, M.A. Columbia Univ., 1902. He came to the United States when he was eight years old. In 1909 he became principal and in 1931 dean of the Teachers Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In 1922 he founded the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. He is best known, however, as the originator and leader of the Reconstructionist movement (see Judaism). Among his many books are Judaism as a Civilization (1934, rev. ed. 1957), The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion (1937), Judaism without Supernaturalism (1958), And If Not Now, When? Toward a Reconstitution of the Jewish People (1973).

Bibliography

See I. Eisenstein and E. Kohn, ed., Mordecai M. Kaplan (1952); R. Libowitz, Mordechai M. Kaplan and the Development of Reconstructionism (1984); E. S. Goldsmith et al., ed., The American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan (1992).

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Kaplan, Mordecai Menahem

(born June 11, 1881, Švencionys, Lithu.—died Nov. 8, 1983, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Lithuanian-born U.S. theologian. He came to the U.S. with his family in 1889. Ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, he later taught there for 50 years. In 1916 he organized the Jewish Center in New York as a secular community organization with a synagogue as its nucleus. In 1922 he founded the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, which became the core of Reconstructionism. Denying the literal accuracy of the Bible, he called for a new conception of God in an attempt to adapt Judaism to the modern world. He founded the journal The Reconstructionist in 1935; his books include Judaism as a Civilization (1934) and Judaism without Superstition (1958).