Mordecai Kaplan’s Reflections on American Jewish Apathy

Born in a Russian shtetl in 1881, Mordecai Kaplan came to New York City as a child and, following in his father’s footsteps, received rabbinic ordination—serving at the Orthodox Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun and helping to found the Young Israel network of synagogues. Thereafter Kaplan gradually broke with Orthodoxy and, finding both Conservative and Reform theologies inadequate, developed a program of his own, which came to be known as Reconstructionist Judaism. Kaplan published much in his lifetime, but his personal journals have only seen the light of day in the 21st century. Jenna Weissman Joselit writes of them: