A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism
Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist movement, was the most influential and controversial radical Jewish thinker in the twentieth century. This book examines the intellectual influences that moved Kaplan from Orthodoxy and analyzes the combination of personal, strategic, and career reasons that kept Kaplan close to Orthodox Jews, posing a question crucial to the understanding of any religion: Can an established religious group learn from a heretic who has rejected its most...
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Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist movement, was the most influential and controversial radical Jewish thinker in the twentieth century. This book examines the intellectual influences that moved Kaplan from Orthodoxy and analyzes the combination of personal, strategic, and career reasons that kept Kaplan close to Orthodox Jews, p
\ ChoiceThis fine biography focuses not only on the emergence of Kaplan's unique thought and approach to Judaism but on the larger thought-world of American orthodoxy from which his thinking emerged and with which it stood in continuing debate. The resultant study not only lays bare Kaplan's mind and personality but, equally important, reveals much about the nature of American Orthodoxy.\ \ \ \ \ \ Jewish Book WorldAs important thinkers in the Orthodox world [the authors] help us to see Kaplan from the vantage point of the world that raised him, New York's Orthodox community. In exploring how its different elements responded to Kaplan, they give us a richer understanding of Orthodoxy.\ \ \
