Reconstructionist Judaism, wrote the Jewish sociologist Charles Liebman almost 60 years ago, “comes closer than any other movement or school of thought to articulating the meaning of Judaism for ...

Mordecai Kaplan’s dream of a Jewish civilization built on choice and fulfillment faces the reality of modern challenges in sustaining community and commitment. Reconstructionist Judaism, wrote the ...

Kaplan’s response to the growing threat of totalitarianism in 1939 suddenly became eerily prescient of the ongoing political crisis in Israel. “Man is not free to choose between having or not having ...

Back in the 1950’s, Orthodoxy was descendant with many predicting its demise. Conservative Judaism was on the rise, fulfilling the needs of urban Jews who had migrated to suburbia after World War II.

At the age of 22. Rabbi Kaplan was so miserable with the hidebound orthodoxy of his first congregation (Manhattan’s Kehilath Jeshurun) that he asked the president of the Jewish Theological Seminary to ...

“How can anyone who edits a prayer book be an atheist?” To stocky, white-haired Dr. Mordecai M. (for Menahem) Kaplan, 64, dean of the Teachers Institute of Manhattan’s Jewish Theological Seminary, the ...

Mel Scult, professor emeritus of Jewish thought at Brooklyn College, received his M.A. from Harvard University, his B.H.L. from the Jewish Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University.

The architect of Reconstructionism, the singular, made-in-America branch of Judaism, was Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, but it was Ira Eisenstein who did much of the building. Eisenstein, an upper West Sider ...

Mel Scult, professor emeritus of Jewish thought at Brooklyn College, received his M.A. from Harvard University, his B.H.L. from the Jewish Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University.

It was exactly one hundred years ago today. It did not seem to be a big deal at the time, but it turned out to be a very big deal. It started with Mordecai Kaplan. Rabbi Kaplan was one of American ...

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