Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

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.

Without in any way inferring that godhood is a force in the same sense that electricity is a force, resort to the analogy of electricity. The reality of electricity is not experienced by any of the five senses. An electric shock is experienced by the muscle nerves.

Likewise the reality of godhood is experienced not by any of the physical senses but by the mind in its emotional functioning. When you are happy to the point of gratitude, or when you react to anything with a genuine feeling of holiness, you are actually experiencing God in the same sense as a feeling of shock is evidence of your contact with electricity.

The fallacy which has to be unlearned—an unlearning in which the analogy to electricity may be of help—is that any experience of God must, like the experience of our neighbor's presence, apprehend Him in his entirety.

This is where anthropomorphism throws one off the track. Habituate yourself to the idea that it is no more possible to be aware of the whole of God in any single experience than it is to sense all of electricity in a single shock. The fallacy of identifying any one experience or even cluster of experiences as the revelation of Deity in His fullness gives rise to idolatry.