Unity in Diversity

Mordecai Menahem Kaplan was the rabbi of a Manhattan congregation at 22, but he was torn between his own theological liberalism and the unbending Orthodox Judaism he preached. "I worked hard," he said later, "to say something in my sermons that I believed and that would also appeal to the people in my congregation." Discouraged, he seriously thought at one point of switching to selling life insurance.

Last week Dr. Kaplan, a courtly, white-goateed scholar with almost half a century in the rabbinate behind him, walked into the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria. Fifteen hundred guests had gathered for the first in a series of testimonial dinners celebrating his 70th birthday (June n). He heard congratulatory messages from Jewish leaders, including Chaim Weizmann, Herbert Lehman and President Louis Finkelstein of Jewish Theological Seminary. They and most American Jews know Dr. Kaplan for his longtime leadership of the Reconstructionist movement--a broad effort to heal the theological divisions in U.S. Judaism.

"The Best of Human Nature." In 1920, when he began what he calls a "Jewish ecumenical movement," Dr. Kaplan found Jewish congregations in the U.S. split into three major groups: the Orthodox, which demands strict observance of scriptural laws; the Reform, which emphasizes broad ethical concepts at the expense of dogma, and the Conservative, a halfway house between the other two. Although he himself became associated with the Conservatives, Dr. Kaplan has tried to weld the three groups together on a broad basis of "peoplehood" rather than theological doctrine. "It does not matter," he says, "whether the community is Orthodox, Conservative or Reform, whether its idea of God is that of an anthropomorphic miracle worker or that which is represented in the best of human nature . . . Jews must become spiritually united, though theologically diverse."

The Reconstructionists want to unify U.S. Judaism, not through a new superchurch, but on the basis of "common interests, common historical memories and a sense of common destiny." Dr. Kaplan and his followers have proposed replacing old style, part-time synagogue schools and rigidly organized congregations with modern Jewish parochial schools and Jewish centers, where Jewish cultural activities and social work are as important as attendance at synagogue. "If Jews are to worship together," he says, "they must have other interests in common besides worship."

This theological freewheeling has brought Dr. Kaplan in conflict with Orthodox rabbis. In 1945 he brought out a new Sabbath prayer book, with the Orthodox prayer book's creed changed to a "criteria of loyalties," emphasizing the congregation's spiritual needs rather than the articles of faith which they must believe. (The old prayer book: "I believe with perfect faith that the prophecy of Moses our teacher is true, and that -he was chief of prophets." Dr. Kaplan's prayer book: "We want the synagogue to enable us to worship God in sincerity and in truth.") Horrified, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis invoked the cherem, the ancient ban of excommunication, against Dr. Kaplan (TIME, June 25, 1945), making him in theory an outlaw from the Jewish community.

The Reason for a Heritage. Many Reform and Conservative congregations, as well as some Orthodox laymen, have nonetheless supported the Reconstructionists. Last January, 500 prominent Jews, including 280 Reform and Conservative rabbis, signed the Reconstructionist "Program for a Jewish Life." Also strongly affected by his views are hundreds of graduates of Manhattan's Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary, where he ha's been a professor (of homiletics and philosophies of religion) since 1910.

What Dr. Kaplan hopes to achieve is creation of a representative national council to bring together the activities of all Jewish communities. Although he would like to make this Jewish community "as distinctive and tangible as the Catholic community," he wants it to be also an "evolving religious civilization" without dependence on established dogma. "The Jewish heritage," he says, "exists for the Jewish people, not the Jewish people for the Jewish heritage."

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