Omitted the Ten Plagues, but brought in Moses

How an upstart rabbi was excommunicated over his Haggadah for a ‘new US Judaism’

Mordecai Kaplan’s vision of a unified, reconstructed religion for American Jews was plagued by backlash but launched a new denomination. Now he’s the subject of a new biography

A Passover problem vexed Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan in the first half of the 20th century. He felt that the Haggadah had grown outdated in modern-day America.

And then he did something about it: he wrote an updated version.

“The New Haggadah,” published in 1941, omitted the Ten Plagues but brought in Moses, who was notably absent from the traditional retelling of the Passover narrative.

Overall, Kaplan made quite a name for himself trying to refashion Judaism for a more modern era — or, one might say, reconstructing it. That was the name given to the movement he is credited with founding: Reconstructionism, the first, and thus far, only, Jewish denomination established in the United States.

Throughout his long life, Kaplan made many contributions to Judaism — his landmark 1934 text “Judaism as a Civilization”; the aforementioned Haggadah; a similarly revamped Shabbat prayerbook; and a new university of Judaism on the West Coast. Now his life gets reconstructed in a biography published last month, “Mordecai M. Kaplan: Restless Soul,” by Jenna Weissman Joselit.

“I loved writing it,” Weissman Joselit told The Times of Israel of the latest volume in the Yale University Press Jewish Lives series. “It kept me awake at night. The questions Kaplan posed were as relevant today as they were back in his time — sometimes even more relevant.”

She explained: “I think he was worried how [Judaism] would survive simply as it was. He did not… see it as able to sustain itself. He did not see its life as guaranteed… He was determined to be its white knight, saving it from itself, ensuring America does not sound the death knell for American Judaism but in fact constitutes its re-flourishing.”

A professor of American Jewish history and material culture at George Washington University, the author’s previous book tackled the Ten Commandments and their popularity in the US. Here she tackled her subject in part through his extensive diaries — a closetful of volumes, some of which are digitized by Kaplan’s longtime employer, the Jewish Theological Seminary.

“I could not have written the book without them,” Weissman Joselit said of the diaries, which cover a span of 70 years. “They helped me plumb Kaplan’s internal landscape. They’re also quite an account of what American Jewish life was like in the 20th century… He was present at every single major American Jewish-related cultural initiative.”

A new movement born in New York

New York was the place where Kaplan propounded many of his ideas — and where some got a fiery response from traditionalists, including his retooled Shabbat prayerbook. Stretching over 500 pages and published in 1945, the book resulted in the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, or Agudath HaRabonim, putting Kaplan in herem — the Jewish equivalent of excommunication. One rabbi burned a copy of the book at New York’s McAlpin Hotel.

“I think [Kaplan] just challenged an assumption of what being Jewish meant,” Weissman Joselit said. “He inverted, subverted, flipped the script. Traditionally, Jewish people were there to serve Judaism, serve God — not the other way around, which was radical [but now is] part of the cultural DNA of American Jews.”

“Also,” she said, “he redefined the notion of religious authority,” previously understood to be transmitted as “diktat from the rabbis, or learned scholars from JTS.” Now that authority could come from a single individual — and, in the case of the prayerbook, that individual was Kaplan.

“He took it on himself to make the change,” said Weissman Joselit. “A lot of people asked, ‘What gives you the authority to do this?’”

As Weissman Joselit explained, the book-burning ended up not being a good look for the Orthodox rabbis — memories of Nazi book-burnings were still fresh — while Kaplan got some vindication.

“At first, it flattened Kaplan completely,” she said. “Ultimately, it elevated him back on his feet. He lived to fight another day.”

Fighting — or at least, rhetorical sparring — was what Kaplan did all his life. Consider why it took decades for Reconstructionism to become a denomination.

“He goes in kicking and screaming,” Weissman Joselit said. “He does not want to call it a denomination. His whole point is unity [for the Jewish people], coming together despite differing claims or views.” When Kaplan finally changed his mind, she said, it was because he was “in the twilight of his life; he was tired of fighting ‘the good fight.’”

By that point, his life had changed significantly. His beloved first wife, Lena Rubin Kaplan, had died, and he married Israeli artist Rivkah Rieger Kaplan.

“Both women anchored him to the world, kept him afloat,” Joselit said, calling each one a “remarkable woman.”

Kaplan and Rieger Kaplan alternated between the US and Israel. Kaplan, who had once written that his blood boiled upon seeing keffiyeh-wearing Arabs on a previous stay in Mandatory Palestine in the late 1930s, now lamented the expulsion of the Palestinians during Israel’s War of Independence. Zionism, in Kaplan’s words, had become “a refugee movement which has given rise to an Arab refugee problem.” This description came from his 1959 book, “A New Zionism.” As Weissman Joselit explains, this book advocated that Zionism shift its focus from the State of Israel to another of Kaplan’s beloved concepts — Jewish peoplehood.

“He can hold many ideas,” she reflected, “that lead to something different… more often than you’d expect.”

The ultimate Jewish girl-dad?

Born in today’s Lithuania, Kaplan immigrated with his family to the US in the late 19th century. Around the turn of the 20th century, the precocious Kaplan was ordained at JTS and became a faculty member. He joined — and left — two Jewish institutions as a spiritual leader: first, the historic Orthodox congregation Kehillath Jeshurun; then a newly launched organization called the Jewish Center that catered to well-to-do coreligionists nicknamed the “alrightniks.” Meanwhile, Kaplan raised a family of four daughters with his first wife, Lena.

At the Jewish Center, Kaplan stirred the pot so fervently with innovation that the alrightniks got queasy. Two articles published months apart in 1920 — one proposing a reconstruction of Judaism, another calling for a society of Jewish revival — proved divisive. He ultimately left the Jewish Center to found a separate organization, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, or SAJ. One groundbreaking move he made there was presiding over what is possibly the first bat mitzvah in American history — of his daughter, Judith, in 1922.

“It came out of the blue,” Weissman Joselit said. “There was not any sort of hint or adumbration of the ritual [in his diary]… It takes off eventually. For much of the early history of SAJ, it did not flourish.”

That early history was also marked by Kaplan’s continual efforts to remove the Kol Nidre prayer from the Yom Kippur service — efforts that were ultimately blocked by the congregation.

“He couldn’t understand why American Jews venerated Kol Nidre so profoundly,” Weissman Joselit said, adding that Kaplan intended “to replace the sentimentality, the mushiness associated with it. He had such a contemporary American Jewish vision — rigor, unity, a more rational approach. He lost sight of the emotion that really binds the Jews to their patrimony.”

The rabbi was more successful when he tried to create, not delete. Consider, again, his Haggadah. Before its release, there were few options for Haggadot that his fellow Americans could access. In some ways, his version was a break with the past, and it met fierce criticism. It did not mention the plagues or any description of the Jews as God’s chosen people. It contained illustrations by a prominent children’s book artist and songs, with recommendations on how to sing them. And it connected American Jews with the present — a world menaced by war.

“He was seeing what was going on in the winter of 1941,” Weissman Joselit said, adding that Kaplan felt “the Haggadah should become more than a salve of the Old World, an ancient piety — it had to be refreshed, reconstructed, reflect what’s going on, the power of democracy, freedom from slavery, which was so much a part of the zeitgeist.”

That Haggadah sold out its first printing of 3,000 copies. Today, Joselit points out, there is a diverse selection of Haggadot — a sign of Kaplan’s lasting influence. Near the end of the book, there is a rather lengthy paragraph outlining all the other ways in which Kaplan left his imprint on today’s Judaism.

“I think so much about contemporary Jewish life — post-denominationalism, a search for unity, ideas about exposure to Jewish tradition, that you do not need to be an observant Jew to want to study Talmud,” Weissman Joselit said. “The boundaries are much more fluid.”