Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

Grainy image of Mel Scult and Mordecai Kaplan meeting in 1972.The Kaplan Blog brings to the web a small portion of the material which will be used in the second volume of Communings of the Spirit: the Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan edited and with introductory material by Dr. Mel Scult. Dr. Scult is providing us with a unique opportunity to look over his shoulder, so to speak, as he interacts and compiles the material for the next volume.

Andy Warhol Image of Martin BuberAt the beginning of each volume of Kaplan's diary (of which there are 27) Kaplan recorded quotations from books he had been reading and which he especially liked. He once wrote in the diary that people should be known by what they quote.

In the following quotation we see Kaplan quoting from Buber’s collection of Hasidic tales. Buber and Kaplan were very different but Kaplan did appreciate much in Buber’s philosophy and the Hasidic tales were certainly part of the legacy of Buber which Kaplan wanted to pass on.

A rabbi once told the following tale:

Below you'll find a selection which reveals another place in the Kaplan diary where he discusses the problem of evil and the way to cope with it. I noted in the previous selection dealing with Kaplan's reactions to the play on the Diary of Anne Frank that Kaplan's impulse is to always focus on ways to cope with suffering even if we cannot explain it. Here he comments on a sermon by his most brilliant disciple, Rabbi Milton Steinberg.

It was in the middle of the war and Steinberg gave a sermon on Thanksgiving that was astounding to say the least. Steinberg mentions the rabbinic dictum that we should bless the evil along with the good and applies this to the War. Neither Steinberg nor Kaplan knew the full extent of the Holocaust but they knew enough to make the reaction here all the more surprising and provocative.

Mordecai M KaplanDecember 29, 1955. vol 18a.

[Read Dr. Scult's intro first.]

Last night I went with my granddaughter Miriam to see the play Anne Frank. I thought it was marvelously well done, from every standpoint, but it left me extremely depressed. It embittered me against mankind for having made it possible for such a cold-blooded, calculating demonic crime to be perpetrated against millions of innocent men, women, and children to be enacted, and what is worse, to be erased from the conscience—if that crime made the least impression on it.

Mordecai M KaplanWednesday, October 3, 1951

[Read Dr. Scult's intro first.]

Every time I preach a sermon, the substance of which I had given to the men in the sermon seminar, I realize how much more difficult it is to speak from the pulpit than to teach in class. The more important the idea expounded, the greater the difference in the amount of care that has to be given to the development and illustration of it.

When I had distributed to the men at the sermon seminar the outline on How to Seek God, I was sure that I could give a repeat performance of it from the S.A.J. pulpit on Rosh Hashanah, without giving it any more thought.

Mordecai KaplanDecember 8, 1938

The first of the three requirements which Jewish studies must meet in order to qualify for centrality in the school curriculum is the ability to help the educand [student] achieve a cosmic orientation. No education fulfils its function if it fails to enable the child to orient himself cosmically. The need for cosmic orientation is to the human being just as natural as are the needs for health and sustenance. With his extraordinary capacity of memory, imagination and reason, man actually lives in an environment that infinitely exceeds in space and time the one he exists in physically.

Mordecai KaplanJuly 11, 1943

The problem of Judaism would not be so acute if the traditional doctrine of revelation were merely obsolete. The trouble is that to cherish that doctrine is as unethical as being guilty of bigamy. To believe that we are in possession of the authentically revealed will of God is incompatible with religious tolerance to say nothing of religious equality.

[Kaplan biographer Mel Scult writes: Kaplan was truly a revolutionary and I would like to maintain that we have not yet begun to understand the radical nature of his theological commitments. The central event of Sinai which we celebrate on Shavuot is not reinterpreted here or put into language that is more acceptable to us. It is rather dismissed as unethical because it assumes the existence of some eternal truth, a doctrine that Kaplan dismisses. Many moderns are in the same situation but they refuse to face it squarely and to see our situation for what it is.

Mordecai KaplanMay 8, 1945

I am entirely unequal to giving anything like adequate expression to the feelings that well up in my heart at the thought that the war in Europe is at an end. If only it were like waking up from a terrible nightmare!

But unfortunately the unspeakable atrocities committed by the insane murderers are too real to disappear with the break of the dawn, and the living victims of the war are too much part of our own lives to be forgotten.

Mordecai M. Kaplan[Introduction by Mel Scult: I think we are all surprised when great people turn out to be like the rest of us. Here is a very ordinary day in the life of Mordecai Kaplan . He was impatient with himself because of something he could not find and was also suffering from the annoyance of a bad tooth ache. What interests me is that Kaplan cannot help but think in transcendent categories. He opens this daily report by saying that even though the divine should help us endure the worst that can befall us he often doesn’t endure his trials as well as he might. Rabbi Kaplan we welcome you to the human race.]

Wed. January 25, 1950

I often speak of religion as that which enables a person to be and do his best and to bear the worst that may befall him. If trying to be and do one's best is religion, I can say I have some religion, but if bearing the worst that may befall one is religion, I have mighty little of it. It doesn't take much to upset me, although I try to control myself. I say this apropos of the way I have been behaving the last two days.

Mordecai M. Kaplan[See the Introduction to the Kaplan blog. And don't forget to read Dr. Mel Scult, Kaplan's biographer, "response" to Kaplan. Ed.]

Monday July 13, 1936

The main difficulty in effecting the transition from the anthropomorphic to a rational conception of God could be overcome, it seems to me, by the following approach: accustom yourself to the thought that the reality of God cannot be grasped by any effort at visualization.