Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, one of the most famous rabbis of the 20th century, is perhaps most well known as the founder of Reconstructionism, a new denomination of Judaism that seeks to embrace modernity while maintaining a respect for Jewish tradition and customs. Mainstream Reconstructionist Judaism views the Jewish faith and people as a constantly evolving religious community that can only exist if an acceptance of innovation is joined by an appreciation for tradition. In line with this innovation, for example, Kaplan denied the divine origin of the Bible, the existence of an afterlife, and the chosenness of the Jewish people. Reconstructionists value the Commandments—rather than divine fulfillments of God’s will— as vehicles to connect the Jewish communities of the present and past.
Kaplan was raised Orthodox, the son of an Orthodox rabbi from Eastern Europe, but in his early years as a rabbi, he oscillated between religious denominations. Never finding a spiritual home for himself, he built one of his own with the creation of Reconstructionist Judaism. He received rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary—the center of Conservative Judaism —where he went on to teach for over fifty years. For a brief period after he received ordination, however, he was active in the Young Israel movement that sought to enliven American Orthodox Jewry and even served as a pulpit rabbi of an Orthodox synagogue. Despite his eventual break from Orthodoxy, some of Kaplan’s innovations did in fact make their way into Modern Orthodoxy. Still, Kaplan’s role in sparking these innovations has been largely ignored by the Orthodox community, most likely because of the controversial nature of his grassroots movement.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, Kaplan’s influence on the structure of Orthodoxy is present in almost all Modern Orthodox synagogues today. Kaplan firmly believed that religious institutions should be concerned with fostering community and vibrant cultural experiences for their congregants and, therefore, in his early years in the rabbinate as part of the Orthodox community, he advocated for these changes. When he got a job in 1918 as the first rabbi of the Jewish Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he convinced the leadership of the Jewish Center to incorporate his vision into its building plans, adding to the building design social halls, classrooms, a gym, and even, in its early years, a pool. It was Kaplan’s influence that made the Jewish Center one of the first synagogues in America to serve not just as a house of worship but also as the cultural and social space for its congregants.
Kaplan left the Jewish Center in 1921, though his lasting impact on what role a synagogue should play in the lives of its constituents can still be seen in the building plans of most Modern Orthodox synagogues today. We think instinctively of a synagogue as one of the centers of our social lives, but it has not always been assumed that weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, adult learning classes, social mixers, and youth groups would all find a home in the same building that houses the sanctuary.
Much more widely known is Kaplan’s creation of the bat mitzvah ceremony. Although the specific service Kaplan performed with his daughter, Judith on March 18, 1922 (in which Judith read from the Haftorah) may not be as widely practiced in Modern Orthodox circles, the celebration itself continues in today’s Modern Orthodox culture, most often without question. This communal custom, of course, was not always the case. Many women growing up in the 1960s and 1970s remember celebrating the secular “Sweet Sixteen” while their male relatives and friends celebrated bar mitzvahs three years earlier. Though it took years for Kaplan’s innovation to ripple its way into Modern Orthodox practice, it now seems strange that there was ever a time when girls’ entrances into Jewish adulthood were not celebrated with just as much gusto and joy as those of the boys’. Still, as the practice of bat mitzvahs has become commonplace, barely any Modern Orthodox girls could tell you to whom they should credit their celebrations.
Kaplan’s goal of balancing modernity and tradition may have been carried out in ways that parted decidedly from Orthodoxy, modern or otherwise, from his rejection of the divinity of the Bible to his view of the commandments as voluntary practices. However, in working to achieve his goals, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s innovations touched and transformed the Modern Orthodox community, an addition for which much credit is due.