#dynamic judaism

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“According to Kaplan, it is the application of functionalism (which he sometimes referred to as functional rationalism) to Jewish experience that led to his discovery of "Judaism as not merely a system of religious beliefs and practices, but as the sum of all those manifestations of the Jewish people's will to live creatively," and to his redefinition of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization.22

From its earliest full formulation (in 1934), Kaplan's definition of Judaism has been revolutionary, challenging virtually all accepted definitions in vogue since the emancipation of Western Jewry in the nineteenth century, when questions such as What is a Jew? and What is Judaism? had first begun to be raised. It challenged both the original Reform concept of Judaism as only a religion of ethical monotheism and the Orthodox view of Judaism as a set of divine rules. Nor could it accept totally the Conservative concept of Judaism as a "positive-historical" religion. To Kaplan, Judaism is a civilizationdynamic and evolving, with religion at its core, but containing other integral elements such as language, secular history, music, art, literature, customs and folkways, and love of the Land. "To choose to remain a Jew," he wrote, "is a three dimensional affair. It involves choosing to belong to the Jewish people, to believe in Jewish religion, and to practice the Jewish way of life. In terms of contemporary philosophy, Judaism as an evolving religious civilization is existentially Jewish peoplehood, essentially Jewish religion, and functionally the Jewish way of life.''23

Kaplan also disagreed with the methods which the various Jewish denominations were using to make Judaism viable in the modern world. He was as opposed to the Reform method of changing Jewish religion to suit the external pressures of the current culture as to the Orthodox method of unquestioningly preserving the traditions of the past, and to the Conservative approach of analyzing and explaining practices in order to preserve the past while assenting to change only when absolutely necessary. Kaplan sought to refashion the whole of Judaism to meet what he called the "spiritual needs" of the Jewish people, brought on by the rapidly expanding dimensions of modern science, philosophy, and political life in a global culture in which the Jewish people now participated.”

from Dynamic Judaism: The Essential Writings of Mordecai Kaplan

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Mordecai Kaplan's interpretation of Judaism is a modernistic and not simply a modern one. It proceeds from the hard-won, early realization he had as an American rabbi that "as long as Jews adhered to the traditional conception of Torah as supernaturally revealed, they would not be amenable to any constructive adjustment of Judaism that was needed to render it viable in a non-Jewish environment."2 Religious modernism may be distinguished from traditionalism in that its point of departure in religious life is the contemporary scene and presentday religious experience rather than the dictates of authority and the religious experience of past generations. Religious modernists are eclectic, selecting out of the garnered treasures of their forebears only those which they see as relevant and significant for their community's life today. Only those aspects of tradition which can be reconciled with what they regard as true and valid in their general world view and approach to life will be incorporated into their religious conceptions. For them, it is modernity, despite its flaws and failings, that is the judge and test of tradition rather than the reverse.3

Kaplan's principal teachings may be subsumed under three major categories: (1) transnaturalism or antisupernaturalism, (2) religioculturalism or civilizationism, and (3) Diaspora Zionism or ethical people-hood. As a religious modernist, Mordecai Kaplan viewed Jewish religion as the product of history and evolution, as a dynamic process subject to continuous growth and development.

''The historical approach," he wrote, "implies that the Jewish tradition is a human phenomenon subject to the natural laws of human behavior and to the normal reaction between human life and the environment."4 A religious naturalist and religious humanist, Kaplan saw the divine as immanent in universal human experience and therefore rejected the grounding of Jewish religion in the authoritarianism of past generations. Moreover, the Jewish religion was for him the product of the thought and experience of the Jewish people, and therefore all supernaturalism had to be rejected.

Amid premodern cultural conditions the Jewish tradition's claim to supernatural origin may have been "entirely natural and normal," for it was simply "a way of expressing awareness of supreme worth and binding authority."5 For modern Jewry, however, Kaplan developed the concept of a Judaism without supernaturalism, a “transnatural'' Judaism which envisaged God in the "organicity" of the cosmos and in the fulfillment of human nature and destiny, rather than in the miraculous suspension of the laws of nature.

"Transnaturalism," he wrote, "is that extension of naturalism which takes into account much that mechanistic or materialistic or positivist science is incapable of dealing with. Trans-naturalism reaches out into the domain where mind, personality, purpose, ideals, values, and meanings dwell. It treats of the good and the true."6

In the tradition of American philosopher John Dewey, Kaplan was frankly more concerned with the ethical validity of the Jewish religion and its survival value for the Jewish people than with its factual veracity. "Its validity must be judged by its effectiveness in securing the emergence of a warless world based on freedom and justice."7 Surely no great religious tradition could afford to be without myth.

Transnatural religion, Kaplan admitted, needed to utilize the language of simile and metaphor, symbol and myth, poetry and drama, "not to help man overcome the hazards of nature, but to enable him to bring under control his inhumanity to his fellow man."8 Although many traditional beliefs might not be verifiable, they had served historically to help the Jewish people survive in the face of adversity. "Demythologizing, rather than discarding, such unenviable assumptions can help maintain their essential validity."9

The primary issue for Kaplan was never merely the rejection of belief in God as a supernatural being but rather the rejection of authoritarian-ism and supernaturalism (which always seeks validation in authority) in every aspect of Jewish religious life and thought. Kaplan did not simply reject the supernatural God-idea. He also and most emphatically rejected the supernatural people idea commonly known as chosenness and the supernatural revelation-idea known as Torah min hashamayirn.

For Kaplan, supernaturalism was a Pandora's box. If there was a supernatural God, a supernatural people, and a supernatural doctrine, mankind let alone the Jewish people was doomed because accommodation and mutual respect became impossible. If, on the other hand, there was a naturalistic, humanistic, or transnatural God (whom we experience in our efforts to control our impulses, better our lives, and improve our world), then there was hope because there could be tolerance, compromise, and mutual understanding between individuals and groups. Kaplan believed that nothing so threatened the future of humanity generally and of the Jewish people in particular as the dogmatism, chauvinism, fanaticism, and intolerance of supernatural religion. The Holocaust became for the Jewish people a particularly painful demonstration of the evils to which doctrines of chosenness, superiority, supernaturalism, and authoritarianism could be subject. Moreover, the religious establishment of the State of Israel, he felt, threatened the very survival of that country as a democratic republic at the same time that Orthodox intransigence in the Diaspora threatened the viability of any kind of multidenominational organized Jewish life there.

Despite Kaplan's great influence on Reform and Conservative Judaism, they could never accept his basic approach because although Reform rejects authoritarianism, both movements accept diluted forms of super-naturalism. Kaplan's Reconstructionism unequivocally rejected both authoritarianism and supernaturalism. It sought to have faith in democracy replace authoritarianism, and religious naturalism (Kaplan's transnaturalism) and religious humanism (salvation in this world through the improvement of human character and conscience) replace supernatural-ism. Kaplan's supporters viewed his position as consistent with the Judaism of the past because of its emphasis on the centrality of the Land of Israel and the primacy of Jewish peoplehood and because in Judaism God has always been seen primarily as the cosmic source of spiritual values and ethical purpose.

Mordecai Kaplan's interpretation of Judaism may be viewed as a Jewish synthesis of the empirical approach to religion, pragmatic philosophy, and pluralistic process theology found in the writings of such twentieth-century philosophers and theologians as William James, John Dewey, Alfred North Whitehead, Henry Nelson Wieman, Douglas Clyde Macintosh, Charles Hartshorne, Schubert M. Ogden, and John B. Cobb, Jr. This modernistic orientation to religion is characterized by openness and tentativeness. It begins with the question of what in the world may be pointed to as unambiguous manifestations of divinity. It establishes the hypothesis that there is a creative process bringing values into being, transforming humanity for the better, and thus making human life worthwhile and holy.10

Kaplan's approach may also be viewed as a Jewish version of what has been termed the "religion of quest" or the "quest orientation" to religion. Complexity, doubt, and tentativeness are terms that have been utilized to describe the religion of quest. An individual who approaches religion in this way surrenders the certainty of final answers without denying the importance of religious questions and without denying the religious dimension of human life. This orientation to religion is associated with a heightened love of humanity, tolerance, and sensitivity to others.11

In addition, Kaplan's approach may be seen as a Jewish version of the "religion of maturity" described by such students of religion as Erich Fromm, Erwin R. Goodenough, Gordon Allport, and H. Richard Niebuhr.12 "The test of modern maturity," according to Goodenough, "is the ability to tolerate paradox and question marks, to accept the unknown as unknown, to adjust to the universe of flux and our apparently miniscule place in it."13 Eager search and passionate quest for meaning characterize religious maturity. Though tentative, mature religion evokes feelings of wonder and awe and encourages responsible behavior in all areas of life.

Mordecai Kaplan's passionate commitment to the survival of the Jewish people, in a world of freedom, justice, and peace in which war has been abolished and democracy securely established, led to the development of his functional approach, which, while denying the traditional theological attempts to discover what God is, stressed what God means to mankind. "Since its main concern in understanding reality is to improve it, functionalism deals with the relation of means to ends and sheds light upon the purpose and meaning of human experience."14

from Dynamic Judaism: The Essential Writings of Mordecai Kaplan