Judaism: An evolving religious civilization

Encounter, Winter 2002 by Sasso, Dennis C

JUDAISM: AN EVOLVING RELIGIOUS CIVILIZATION1

In 1881, the year Mordecai Kaplan was born in Lithuania, the Czar was assassinated, the Jews were blamed, and the pogroms began. At age 8, Kaplan and his family fled to Europe and from there to the United States.

The family sailed for America on Bastille Day. Everyone was on deck watching the fireworks. It also happened to be the eve of the Sabbath and time for prayer. By the time young Kaplan finished his prayers and arrived on deck, the fireworks were over. This childhood memory remained in his mind.

Kaplan devoted his life of 102 years to articulating a philosophy and program to help Jews live in two civilizations and to effect a coexistence and integration of the best in the Jewish and Western democratic traditions. Reconstructionism began by attending to the social condition and historic reality of the Jewish people.

Generations of Conservative, Reform, and Orthodox rabbis and teachers have been influenced by Kaplan's writings and teachings. His first major work, Judaism as a Civilization, appeared in 1934 and established Kaplan as the most creative, perceptive, and prophetic twentieth-century American Jewish religious thinker.

For Kaplan, religion is a human, social phenomenon. Judaism begins with the Jewish people. "Belonging precedes believing," Kaplan would say. The common denominator of Jewish life is neither belief, precept, nor practice, but the historic community of Israel, Am Yisrael, the Jewish people.

Kaplan conceived of Judaism as "the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people." As a civilization, Judaism includes history, law, language, literature, music, poetry, art, social organization, rituals, folkways, social standards of conduct, spiritual ideals, and aesthetic values. Judaism is not static; it is dynamic. It is not monolithic; it is heterogeneous and pluralistic.

While religion is at the core of the Jewish civilization, it is not all there is to being a Jew. Kaplan disagreed with Reform Judaism, which sought to reduce Judaism to its faith elements, calling it "ethical monotheism." Kaplan once commented, "The difference between Judaism as a religion and as a civilization is the difference between a point of reference and a frame of reference."

Kaplan's disagreement with Orthodoxy and the more traditionalist or "right wing" of Conservative Judaism, centered upon their inability to take seriously the notion that Judaism is a changing and evolving religious civilization. Evolution, Kaplan would maintain, does not just happen. We must cause it to happen, purposefully and programmatically. Change is the only constant of Jewish life.

Reconstructionist and Conservative Jews agree that the most important element in Jewish life is the sense of belonging, the awareness of community. They differ in the weight accorded to traditional practice and custom in order to effect change. Conservative Judaism maintains that change must be made in keeping with the precedent of the Halakhah (the legal aspects of the religious tradition). Thus, the Conservative Movement devotes much attention, for example, to the details of the Kashrut (dietary laws) of cheese, or to whether a Jew can drive to the synagogue on the Sabbath. The Reconstructionist Movement poses the more basic questions, "What does it mean to eat in such a way that we honor the moral, environmental, and health concerns of our society?" "How can we help to enrich and enhance the meaning of Shabbat observance for our generation?"

Reconstructionists believe that certain changes may be made even when we cannot find specific support for them in the Halakhah, if such adjustments offer a positive response to the social, ethical, and spiritual needs of the Jewish people. Thus, the issue of the rabbinic ordination of women was never a halakhic issue for Reconstructionists; it was a socio-moral issue. The past has a vote, but not a veto. We must to learn to live with the Halakhah, but not always by it. We take tradition seriously, but not literally.

Not only rabbis and scholars, but also an informed and concerned laity, share in the responsibility of shaping the future of Judaism. Kaplan once said, "An intelligent and instructed laity is as indispensable for the teaching of good religion as for the practice of sound medicine. For lack of such laity various kinds of religious quackery are peddled around and bought at bargain prices."

The classical view of revelation is that "God revealed Torah to Israel." The Reconstructionist understanding is that "Israel in its search for God creates or unfolds Torah." Torah, in the religious vocabulary of Reconstructionism, is a human document. It is holy not because it is God's final and unchanging word, but because it is the first word, the earliest record of our people's ongoing quest for God, for the values that make for salvation. For the ancients, miracles and supernatural events were believed to be the source of truth and ultimate values, Today, we must learn to discover godliness, holiness, and goodness in the world of nature and in the human experiences, relationships, and struggles that affirm human dignity and our common humanity, as well as in the beauty of our heritage. Reconstructionist Judaism teaches us to think of Torah as a way of searching. We are not merely descendants, but also ancestors to future generations.