Author: Mel ScultPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Judaism
Languages : en
Pages : 433
Book Description
Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century
Author: Mel ScultJudaism Faces the Twentieth Century
Author: Mel ScultPublisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814322802
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 444
Book Description
Kaplan, who died in 1983 at the age of 102, arrived in America as a boy, and, as he grew, sought to find ways of making Judaism compatible with the American experience and the modern temper. He founded the Jewish Center and the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, establishing the prototypes for the modern expanded synagogue. This biography reappraises the significance of his contributions and offers an intimate look at the man and his thinking. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Communings of the Spirit, Volume III
Author: Mel ScultPublisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814347681
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 426
Book Description
Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881–1983), founder of Reconstructionism and the rabbi who initiated the first Bat Mitzvah, also produced the longest Jewish diary on record. In twenty-seven volumes, written between 1913 and 1978, Kaplan shares not only his reaction to the great events of his time but also his very personal thoughts on religion and Jewish life. In Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan Volume III, 1942–1951, readers experience his horror at the persecution of the European Jews, as well as his joy in the founding of the State of Israel. Above all else, Kaplan was concerned with the survival and welfare of the Jewish people. And yet he also believed that the well-being of the Jewish people was tied to the safety and security of all people. In his own words, "Such is the mutuality of human life that none can be saved, unless all are saved." In the first volume of Communings of the Spirit, editor Mel Scult covers Kaplan’s early years as a rabbi, teacher of rabbis, and community leader. In the second volume, readers experience the economic problems of the 1930s and their shattering impact on the Jewish community. The third volume chronicles Kaplan’s spiritual and intellectual journey in the 1940s. With candor and vivid detail, Kaplan explores his evolving beliefs concerning a democratic Judaism; religious naturalism; and the conflicts, uncertainties, and self-doubts he faced in the first half of the twentieth century, including his excommunication by the ultra-Orthodox in 1945 for taking a more progressive approach to the liturgy. In his publications, Kaplan eliminated the time-honored declarations of Jewish chosen-ness as well as the outdated doctrines concerning the resurrection of the dead. He wanted a prayer book that Jews could feel reflected their beliefs and experiences; he believed that people must mean what they say when they pray. Kaplan was a man of contradictions, but because of that, all the more interesting and significant. Scholars of Judaica and rabbinical studies will value this honest look at the preeminent American Jewish thinker and rabbi of our times.
The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan
Author: Mel ScultPublisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253010888
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
“An important and powerful work that speaks to Mordecai M. Kaplan’s position as perhaps the most significant Jewish thinker of the twentieth century.” (Deborah Dash Moore coeditor of Gender and Jewish History) Mordecai M. Kaplan, founder of the Jewish Reconstructionist movement, is the only rabbi to have been excommunicated by the Orthodox rabbinical establishment in America. Kaplan was indeed a radical, rejecting such fundamental Jewish beliefs as the concept of the chosen people and a supernatural God. Although he valued the Jewish community and was a committed Zionist, his primary concern was the spiritual fulfillment of the individual. Drawing on Kaplan’s 27-volume diary, Mel Scult describes the development of Kaplan’s radical theology in dialogue with the thinkers and writers who mattered to him most, from Spinoza to Emerson and from Ahad Ha-Am and Matthew Arnold to Felix Adler, John Dewey, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. This gracefully argued book, with its sensitive insights into the beliefs of a revolutionary Jewish thinker, makes a powerful contribution to modern Judaism and to contemporary American religious thought. “An interesting, stimulating, and well-done analysis of Kaplan’s life and thought. All students of contemporary Jewish life will benefit from reading this excellent study.” —Jewish Media Review “The book is highly readable―at times almost colloquial in its language and style―and is recommended for anybody with a familiarity with Kaplan but who wants to understand his thought within a broader context.” —AJL Reviews
Rabbis
Author: George KalinskyPublisher: Universe Publishing(NY)
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
From the lens of world-renowned photographer George Kalinsky comes this look at one hundred leading and influential rabbis of the twenty-first century. Through lush and brilliant photographs and essays by the rabbis in their own words we see the multifaceted people they are: leaders, teachers, preachers, scholars, spiritual innovators, chaplains, as well as fathers, mothers, avid hobbyists, and professionals. "Rabbis: The Many Faces of Judaism is an extraordinary book about modern Judaism. It features one hundred portraits of rabbis that span the globe and the ideological spectrum, from youthful Orthodox communal leaders to pillars of contemporary Reform Judaism, portraying today's Jewish leaders, and Judaism itself, in its diversity and dimensions. Keepers of the flame of Judaism, these are people who are working in the twenty-first century but are deeply aware of their religious legacy. Some of the rabbis included in the book are: Rabbi Eric Yoffie, who was named the number one Jewish leader in America in "The Forward in November 2001; Rabbi Eugene Borowitz, a well-known political activist and founder of a popular New York synagogue; Shmuley Boteach, author of "Kosher Sex and a fixture on talk shows and in the media; Norman Lamm, outgoing president of Yeshiva University; Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary; David Wolpe, author of "Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times, and other books; Laura Geller, Senior rabbi, Temple Emanuel, Beverly Hills, Calif.; Irving "Yitz" Greenberg, theologian and former chair of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, and Harold Kushner, author of "When Bad Things Happen to Good People. The book also includesRabbi Sally Priesand, America's first woman rabbi, and Rabbi Yosef Hadana, the first Ethiopian rabbi. Chosen for the rabbis' wide range of beliefs and interests, the people here represent the rabbinate as the rich, hard
Communings of the Spirit
Author: Mordecai M. KaplanPublisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814331163
Category : Judaism
Languages : en
Pages : 568
Book Description
Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983), founder of Reconstructionism, is the preeminent American Jewish thinker and rabbi of our times. His life embodies the American Jewish experience of the first half of the twentieth century. With passionate intensity and uncommon candor, Kaplan compulsively recorded his experience in his journal (some 10,000 pages). This first volume of Communings of the Spirit covers Kaplan's early years as a rabbi, teacher of rabbis, and community leader. Kaplan, who trained rabbis for half a century, gives us an inside picture of life at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the center of Conservative Judaism in America. He records his masterful weekly sermons, which were attended regularly by his students. With unflinching candor, he reveals his successes and failures, uncertainties and self-doubts. Undeterred by attacks on his radical beliefs, he never wavered in the pursuit of a more dynamic Judaism.
God-Optional Religion in Twentieth-Century America
Author: Isaac Barnes MayPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197624235
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
"This book is about the relationship between the American religious left and secularization. It explores how three liberal religions -liberal Quakers, Unitarians, and Reconstructionist Jews- attempted to preserve their traditions in the modern world by redefining what it meant to be religious. Between the 1920s and the 1960s, these groups underwent the most massive theological change imaginable, allowing their members to opt not to believe in a personal God. As the God of traditional theism did not seem to fit into a post-Darwinian framework, these traditions took the dramatic step of redefining that concept to make a "God" that did fit, and eventually they went even further by making belief in God a matter of purely personal preference. This book narrates how, over the course of the twentieth century, believing in God and being religious became increasingly disconnected. It documents the continuance of these religious communities even after the theological rationales that originally brought them together disappeared, their communal identities instead becoming focused on humanitarian service and political commitments, which began to replace a shared adherence to theism. The radical religious views of these small liberal denominations became influential among the wider society, and eventually became accepted in American popular culture and law"--
House of Glass
Author: Hadley FreemanPublisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1501199153
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
A writer investigates her family’s secret history, uncovering a story that spans a century, two World Wars, and three generations. Hadley Freeman knew her grandmother Sara lived in France just as Hitler started to gain power, but rarely did anyone in her family talk about it. Long after her grandmother’s death, she found a shoebox tucked in the closet containing photographs of her grandmother with a mysterious stranger, a cryptic telegram from the Red Cross, and a drawing signed by Picasso. This discovery sent Freeman on a decade-long quest to uncover the significance of these keepsakes, taking her from Picasso’s archives in Paris to a secret room in a farmhouse in Auvergne to Long Island to Auschwitz. Freeman pieces together the puzzle of her family’s past, discovering more about the lives of her grandmother and her three brothers, Jacques, Henri, and Alex. Their stories sometimes typical, sometimes astonishing—reveal the broad range of experiences of Eastern European Jews during Holocaust. This thrilling family saga is filled with extraordinary twists, vivid characters, and famous cameos, illuminating the Jewish and immigrant experience in the World War II era. Addressing themes of assimilation, identity, and home, this powerful story about the past echoes issues that remain relevant today.
Judaism as a Civilization
Author: Mordecai M. KaplanPublisher: Jewish Publication Society
ISBN: 0827610505
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 661
Book Description
A transformative work on modern Judaism
Facing the Twentieth Century
Author: James Marcus KingPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 732
Book Description