the excommunication of mordecai kaplan

8/8/2019 The Excommunication of Mordecai Kaplan

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e Excommunication of Mordecai Kaplan 21

The Excommunication of Mordecai KaplanZachary Silver

On 12 June 1945, a group o Orthodox rabbis known as Agudat

HaRabbanim1

assembled in the Hotel McAlpin in New York and burned thesidduro Rabbi Mordecai Menahem Kaplan o the Jewish Teological Seminary(JS). Tis ceremonial book burning concluded the ormal excommunicationo the ounder o Reconstructionism. Just one month ater the Allies declaredvictory over Nazi Europe, a group o rabbis used religious principles and asymbolic act to attempt to stie a dissenting voice within their midst, evengoing to the extreme act o burning a prayer book that contained the name oGod to underscore their point.

Despite extensive scholarship about Kaplan, historians have yet to addressthis seminal event in the lie o one o twentieth-century Americas oremost

Jewish leaders and thinkers.2 Tough hardly the rst time that Kaplans workhad angered traditional Jews, his Sabbath Prayer Bookproved to be the workthat incited the Union o Orthodox Rabbis o the United States and Canada (orAgudat HaRabbanim in Hebrew) to issue a ormal excommunicationtheancient rite oheremrom the Jewish community against Kaplan.3

Responses to both the herem and the burning o the siddurvaried widely inthe Jewish community. Reactions to the event diverged even among Kaplans

own colleagues at JS, where he served as a senior aculty member.4 But thenews o the herem stretched well beyond the Jewish community.5 While AgudatHaRabbanim intended the herem as an internal edict within the religious

Jewish community, its action aected the entire English-speaking Jewish public.Despite the act that the excommunication was both a rare and drastic Jewishreligious rite, its subsequent impotence ormed a watershed moment or a wider

Jewish community, coming out o wartime and wrestling anew with the mean-ing o democracy and reedom in America. In many ways, the herem indicated

the ailure o a particular worldview during this transitional moment in Jewishhistory; the sectarian nature o the Union o Orthodox Rabbis did not mesh

with the multivalent culture o postwar America. Te very notion o a heremin 1945 New York was inimical to the sociological realities o Jewish culture inNew York City, particularly when the rabbis enacted it upon somebody outside

Agudat HaRabbanims jurisdiction.6Tough conceptions o a heterogeneous Jewish community were present

beore the herem, that event served as a marker in time, indicating an emerging

consensus to allow or ree expression o religious ideologies and practices. Non-Jews largely sympathized with Kaplan, specically because they were deeplydisturbed by the silencing o any voice in the midst o a modern democracy. Asgreater trends o religious universalism took hold in the 1950s, the ideologies othe extreme religious right became increasingly marginalized in America.


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22 American Jewish Archives Journal

Four years beore the herem, Kaplan had written his rst liturgical docu-ment, e New Haggadah.7 Tat publication led the entire JS aculty to issuea unanimous letter to Kaplan, condemning him or liturgical blasphemy.8 In1945, Kaplans siddur, a book that took the same heretical liberties as the hag-

gadah,sent tidal waves through the Seminary.9 JS President Louis Finkelsteinhad attempted to oster dialogue in the wider community o world Judaism andreligion.10 Agudat HaRabbanim, by contrast, rejected any attempt to reconcilereligious and secular lie, and it oered only a sectarian sociology, a movemento sel-segregation in New York City.

Even though Kaplan had already been a pariah on the aculty or much ohis career at the Seminary, and the letter o condemnation about the haggadahhad served as a warning bell concerning his liturgical license while employedat the institution, Agudat HaRabbanim all but orced Finkelstein to deend

Kaplan against outside attack.11 Finkelsteins response to the herem tangiblymarked the Seminary as an institution that would mandate the representationo a plurality o belies, a undamental principle in the Conservative movementsemerging place o leadership in American Jewish lie during the 1950s.

Ancient Ritual in the Big AppleAlthough the decision to issue a herem grew rom Agudat HaRabbanims

very traditional religious principles, the way in which it executed the heremwasantithetical to the very abric o the organization. While ghting to secludeitsel rom secular society during the rst hal o the twentieth century, AgudatHaRabbanim nevertheless used modern tools to shape the public scope o theevent in 1945. Notably, rather than hold the ceremony at a synagogue, it washeld in one o New Yorks largest hotels, located at 34th Street and Broadway,in the center o downtown.12

Te Hotel McAlpin served a double purpose or Agudat HaRabbanim. Onthe one hand, the sheer size o the hotel and its prominent position compelledattention when the hotel was built in 1912, it was the largest hotel in the

world.13 But the location also held particular resonance or the Yiddish-speakingpress and public, Agudat HaRabbanims principal constituents: From 1932 to1938 the hotel hosted the Yiddish radio station, WEVD, beore the station latermoved up to 46th Street.14

Using a dash o its own irony, the Reconstructionist Foundation also hostedits annual meeting in October 1945 at the Hotel McAlpin. While the topicsor the conerenceUnity and Diversity in Jewish Lie and NecessaryChanges in Jewish Religious Beliescould have served the needs o any Jewish

organization that sought to integrate Judaism and modernity, these choices ortopics particularly resonated in the very location where a group o rabbis hadburned a sidduronly our months beore.15


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Kaplan excised all reerences to Gods condemning enemies o the Jewishpeople.23 O course, the most obvious argument against this excision was theHolocaust, still painul today and, at that moment, a newly revealed trauma;eliminating the Nazis was the onlyway to ensure the very survival o Judaism.24Rosenberg spoke o the textual excision and ran with his own homiletical

license, using this example rom the liturgy as a proo o the extent o Kaplansheresy. Ater all, as Rosenberg stated, how could one already orget the deathin Majdanek, Auschwitz, reblinka, Buchenwald, Dachau and more?25

With the speech complete, Rabbi Israel Doshowitz next read the ormaldecision aloud, and each member present repeated, word or word, the pro-ceedings.26 Following the recitation o the rst Psalm,27 Rabbi Meir Kriegerestablished that the agreement was according to Jewish religious law, at whichpoint one rabbi burned a copy o Kaplans siddur.28

Te Union o Orthodox Rabbis later disavowed responsibility or the bookburning, claiming that the event was not a scheduled part o the ceremony butrather the act o one rabbi rom the audience who acted on his own, ater theservice was completed.29 Tis version seems unlikely, however, since the articleabout the excommunication in HaPardes, the unocial magazine o AgudatHaRabbanim, gives specic justication or the book burning as part o theceremony, and does so in halakhic terms.30 Te more likely scenario is that,ater witnessing the heated public reaction, Agudat HaRabbanim chose to

disavow responsibility or burning the sidduras a ace-saving public relationsmove. Tus, by saying that the burning was not part o the planned activities,the Union o Orthodox Rabbis could attempt to reocus public attention on thegreater issues o the heresy o Kaplan and the Conservative movement, ratherthan on a particularly unsettling segment o the ceremony, which itsel evokedmemories o Nazi ritual book burning. O course, the uproar implies that

Agudat HaRabbanim did not realize that most Americans would be troubledby a book burning in 1945a lapse o judgment that would maniest the extentto which the Union o Orthodox Rabbis had lost touch with contemporarycurrents in American culture.31

Te written text o the herem echoed much o what Rosenberg issued in hisspeech, echoing the vocierous castigation o Kaplan: Dr. Kaplan has publisheda new monster that was prepared in the name o aprayer book[emphasis in theoriginal]; its contents were shown to the eye o every heretic and heresy beorethe God o Israel and the elds o the aith o Israels orah.32 Te documentexplained that because o this publication, Agudat HaRabbanim had decidedto remove Kaplan rom the nation o Israel until he [returned] with ull

repentance according to the law and the aith.33 While Kaplan would havea chance, albeit a small one, to return to the nation o Israel according to theUnion o Orthodox Rabbis standards, the siddurwas banned or all time; one


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should not even deign to look at it nor touch it, and it would not be allowedanywhere in Jewish communal settings.34

Following the declaration, the text provides the scriptural precedents orissuing the herem, citing rabbinic prohibitions to tamper with prayer. Usingproos rom tractates BerakhotandMegillah o the Babylonian Talmudas well

as rom Maimonidess Laws of Prayer, the herem document expresses proounddistress that a man two thousand years ater the Court o Elders could simplyraise his hand and strike down a tradition that had been passed down romgeneration to generation.35 In an ultimate statement o rustration, one thatseems antithetical to such a legal document, the Hebrew text ollows with whatcan only be interpreted as two internal screams, Ahh! Ahh!36 I the heremitsel did not already indicate an act o ultimate despair, then its very language

would make clear that this document and ritual ormed a desperate attempt by

Agudat HaRabbanim to retain its political power in Judaism.

Agudat HaRabbanim: Attacking Kaplan and JTS Since Day OneAgudat HaRabbanim was ormed in 1902, one day ollowing the death o

Rabbi Jacob Joseph, the chie rabbi o New York. Its ormation was in responseto American secularism, which it saw as sabotaging the integrity o Judaism.Te rabbis dened their mission as a divine obligation to unite and orm aunion o Orthodox rabbis.37

Agudat HaRabbanim began voicing its distaste or Kaplan virtually romthe moment he set oot outside the gates o JS ater his rabbinical ordinationin 1903.38 By 1904, the organization issued a circular throughout the Jewishpress, specically targeting Kaplan as well as other graduates o the Seminary.Some o the American Jewish press elt threatened immediately by the antago-nistic Agudat HaRabbanim; the Yidishe Gazetten, a paper usually associated

with moderate Orthodoxy, wrote: We shudder to think o the depths to whichthese men would drag Judaism i they had the powerto what extremes theiranaticism would reach.39 TeAmerican Hebrew, which mistook the circular or

a herem, was particularly perturbed by the idea o an excommunication decreeagainst Kaplan. Characterizing the decision as hillul Ha Shema proanation oour Holy Faith, the publication condemned the perceived herem as a disgrace[which] tends to lower our ellow citizens o our aiths.40

Agudat HaRabbanim issued its most extreme pre-excommunicationcondemnation o Kaplan in a response to an article he wrote in theMenorah

Journalin 1920, titled, A Program or the Reconstruction o Judaism:

Te Agudat ha-Rabbanim demands rom Pro. Kaplan and rom the otherworkers in the society ehiyat Israel that they should at once stop theiractivities. I no reply is received rom them in the course o one week, theAgudat ha-Rabbanim shall be prepared to begin open warare against thismovement and use all possible means in this warare.41


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O course, while extreme, this invocation o war was merely rhetorical;twenty-our years later, in the wake o a worldwide shooting war, the declarationevolved into action, maniested by the burning o Kaplans siddur.42

Because Agudat HaRabbanim declared itsel as the onlyOrthodox rabbinatein America, it elt an obligation, perhaps even a divine imperative, to protect

the American Jewish community rom being steered rom the proper way.43Nowhere did the organization exempliy its theocratic reign over American

Jewish lie more vividly than in its attempt to control the kashrutindustry.Control over what people eat, ater all, has an everyday eect and guaranteesan institutions inuence in routine activities. Friction over the supervision okosher ood has been a concern throughout Jewish history, in part because othe deep legal complexities involved in the process. As a result, the position oguardian o the kosher ood industry has held great political and moral clout

within the Orthodox community. From its inception in 1902 until 1923, AgudatHaRabbanim had been the sole institutional authority on kashrut. However,in 1923 the Orthodox Union (OU) ocially entered the kashrutderby whenit sanctioned Heinz Vegetarian Beans, giving Agudat HaRabbanim its rstcompetition in the American kashrutindustry. With that new competition,more than ever, Agudat HaRabbanim had to prove its status as thesystem oorah-true Judaism and, hence, the only entity to which Jews should turn orreligious authority. But the deense o its authority sparked both liberal and

orthodox members to resist the organizations attempted control o the market.44

In particular, other Orthodox organizations that dealt with halakhic minutiaeread Agudat HaRabbanims arguments over kashrutin America as politicalskirmishes that did not deal with the ultimate issues ingrained in the religiouslaw. An editorial in the 1941 edition oe Commentator, Yeshiva Collegesnewspaper, read:

Tat the driving orce is the leadership o theAgudat HaRabbanim is nosurprise. Te record o anarchy in Kashrut, and the dire danger o a barren

uture to orah-true Judaism are eloquent testimony to the hegemony o theAgudat HaRabbanim in American Orthodox lie.45

Following the excommunication, Kaplan noted in his journal just howdesperate he believed the organization to be and commented on what he elt

was its tyrannical hold on the kashrutindustry:

From the standpoint o a struggle or power, we have to remember that thoserabbis represent a vanishing order. Teir sense o insecurity is great. o achieve

some degree o security they have to depend on the Kashrut business. omake sure that people will demand Kashrut, they combat all tendencies thatmight weaken their authority. Here is where the nazi pattern o struggleor power beings to emerge. Te Nazisthe spokesmen o a people trying toovercome its sense o insecurity by a violent struggle or powersingled out


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the democracies as the object o attack. In order to bring about inner divisionamong these democracies the nazis [blamed] the Jews, who were the mostconspicuous beneciaries o democracy. In like manner the most conspicu-ous beneciaries o the liberal policy o the Conservative movement is Kaplanwhose atheistic philosophy is the dominant philosophy o the movement. It

is thereore urgent that we must stop him. Now that he has come out with aprayer book in which he openly aims his heresies is the most opportune timeto launch an attack against the entire Conservative movement.46

Te 1930s marked a time when the Conservative movement also threatenedAgudat HaRabbanims status as the sole expert in Jewish legal exegesis. In his1932 address, Union o Orthodox Rabbis President Rabbi Eliezer Silver spoketo the members o Agudat HaRabbanim about the dangers that Conservatives

would pose in American Jewish lie, not only in disseminating critical approaches

to orah study but even in areas o halakhah:

We now must contend with the Conservatives who consider themselvesOrthodox. Tey have begun to seize or themselves the duties o the authenticrabbinate. We must oppose them and display to the masses exactly whoare the genuine and learned rabbis.47

Agudat HaRabbanim elt that it had let JS rabbis encroach on thenational halakhic conscience by not ghting vocierously enough against their

opinions. By 1930, with JS graduate Louis Epsteins proposal o a legal allow-ance or a woman who was reused aget(Jewish divorce) to remarry, the Uniono Orthodox Rabbis could no longer see Conservative rabbis as irrelevant tomatters o a national halakhic consciousness.48 Right-wing Orthodoxy went asar as to blame itsel or allowing Conservative voices to inuence the Americanconsciousness, even in the realm o halakhah. As it says in Agudat HaRabbanimsunocial journal, HaPardes:

We must coness and say we are guilty! Tere are ound among us rabbis

who respect them, who come together with them to be mesader kiddushin[marriage ociate], or at other gatherings. Tere are those o us who entertheir synagogues there are those o us who educate our children in theirseminary, and this is what brought about their chutzpah to establish themselvesas rabbis, to rule in halakhot ogittin [divorce] and kiddushin [betrothal].49

In a deensive response to Epsteins 1930 article and its companion teshuvah(responsum), written in 1935, the Union o Orthodox Rabbis issued an anony-mous herem in 1935 against anyone who would dare to use the responsum.50

For Agudat HaRabbanim, this teshuvah meant that the OU, with its entranceinto kashrutcertication, was not the only organization taking halakhic poweraway rom its previously impenetrable organization; now the tower o hereticsat JS was doing so as well.


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The SiddurBurned in the Name of ReligionKaplan articulated his vision or a prayer book as early as 1923, in the pub-

lished dedication o the Society or the Advancement o Judaism, the synagoguehe ounded to sponsor a reconstructionist ideology.51 In describing his Tirteen

Wants or Judaism at the dedication ceremony, Kaplans seventh Want dis-cussed enabling Jews to worship God in sincerity and in truthand Kaplandid not believe that the established liturgy lled the communitys needs.52

For Kaplan and his coeditors, Ira Eisenstein and Eugene Kohn, this docu-

ment represented a way to return people to prayer. As they describe in theintroduction: Te motions survive; the emotions have ed. Te lips move, butthe heart is unmoved.53 Yet the editors understood that this particular siddur

would be deemed a radical text. Tus they preaced it with caution, adding aootnote as early as the title o the introduction, specically indicating that noother institutionsnamely JScontributed to producing the siddur. Kaplanpredicted the potential allout, because he had already experienced turmoil withthe publication o his haggadah.

Although Kaplans philosophical texts were also considered heretical, apply-ing his ideologies to a prayer book transerred heretical philosophy to hereticalhuman behavior. Indeed, JS would not want to be associated with the ideo-logical message o the siddur, or or that matter, even to own a copy o it. Upon

Mordecai Kaplans 1945 Sabbath Prayer book

(Courtesy Klau Library)


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publication, Kaplan asked Finkelstein i he should even bother giving copies asa courtesy to his colleagues, as was customary. He noted in his journal:

When the new Prayer Book appeared, I told F. that I did not [know] whetherto send copies o it to my colleagues on the aculty or not. On the one hand,

I didnt want to slight them by not sending them copies o the prayer book.On the other hand, I didnt want to irritate them by sending them copies,knowing how bitterly opposed most o them were to the changes in the newprayer-book. I asked F. to sound my colleagues to nd out how they elt. WhenI saw him last week he told me I neednt bother sending them.54

For the siddur to evoke religious meaning or twentieth-century Jews,Kaplan elt that the liturgy had to be intellectually honest about the goals omodernity, even i that meant changing the ideals o ancient doctrine.55 As he

and his coeditors point out in the introduction:

People expect a Jewish prayer book to express what a Jew should believeabout God, Israel and the orah, and about the meaning o human lie andthe destiny o mankind. We must not disappoint them in that expectation.But, unless we eliminate rom the traditional text statements o belie that areuntenable and o desires which we do not or should not cherish, we misleadthe simple and alienate the sophisticated.56

Tus, Kaplan and his coeditors notably eliminated reerences to severaldoctrines: Jews as the chosen people, the personal Messiah, a supernatural God

who has a role in daily lie, divine retribution, and the restoration o the emplesacricial cult.57 In some cases, the editors replaced the traditional texts withones that responded to the moral tone the editors wished to set; in others, theysimply excised the troublesome passage completely.58

Te JS aculty considered these alterations particularly contentious becausenon-Jewish circles oten misunderstood the concept o the selection o Israeland interpreted it as a certain Jewish arrogance. For a rabbi who understood

the theoretical original intent o the texts to make such changes seemed tolegitimize the views o the non-Jewish opponent, as the letter rom the Seminaryaculty about the haggadah suggests: Such a change would indicate thatthe doctrine o the election o Israel implies a sense o superiority on the parto Israel. Tis accusation so requently made by the enemies o Israel is, ocourse, groundless.59

Prayers owed through Kaplans journal, some o which were modied andincorporated into the prayer book.60 As with the rest o Kaplans interpretation o

Judaism, however, his personal prayers oten were distinctly tailored. Eisensteindescribed how in the summer o 1942 at the New Jersey shore he saw Kaplanpraying rom texts other than a siddur. It was not unusual or Eisenstein tosee Kaplan wrapped in telin (phylacteries) and a tallit(prayer shawl) yet also


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to see Kaplan davening rom Dewey.61 Prayer stood at the center o his lie,so it was not surprising that it was key to his eorts to reconstruct Judaism inthe modern era.

A gited and committed teacher who elt that education was one o theessential components to the Jewish peoples survival, Kaplan also placed

pedagogy at the center o his siddur. More than a vehicle to communicate withGod, this text would serve as a mode o instruction, both in the nature o thetext itsel and in how Kaplan limited the traditional readings to make room orsupplementary study. For example, he eliminated repetitions o the standingprayer and most o the additional service or the Sabbath, choosing instead toinclude supplementary study materials that could be accessed easily within thesiddur. Not only did shortening the service make room or studying texts, butthe prayer book itsel unctioned as a study guide, with 329 o the 565 pages

appearing as supplemental readings.62 Kaplan also emphasized the Americanexperience o prayer, including prayers and entire services or holidays such asMemorial Day, Independence Day, and Tanksgiving. He crated a vision orliving as cultural hyphenatesto be an American Jew was to live both as acitizen o the American civilization and the Jewish civilization.63

Kaplan ultimately elt that Jews did not eel at peace in a traditional prayersetting and were alienated by the service. Tereore, by creating a siddurthatcatered to what he elt people neededrather than prayers prescribed by a

system o Jewish law, which he oten elt to be antiquatedhe created what hebelieved to be a means to bring people to the synagogue.

Why Kaplan? Why Excommunication?While Agudat HaRabbanim clearly saw Kaplan as a threat to the abric

o traditional Judaism, the changes that he made to the service were relativelytame compared to those o the American Reormers. Tis begs the question:

Why didnt right-wing Orthodoxy excommunicate the creators o the Reormliturgy? Te reality is that, politically, there was no real opportunity or Agudat

HaRabbanim to make a similar statement regarding the Reorm Jews o thenineteenth century. By the time Agudat HaRabbanim had decided to use itspolitical clout or an excommunication, it elt that the Reormers had so arremoved themselves rom the Jewish norm o discourse that they no longer

were a part o the Jewish mainstream. As the ormal statement o the heremstated: It is more comortable or a Jew to enter into a Christian Church thanto enter a Reorm emple.64

Te questionwhy Kaplan instead o the Reormers?seems to have been

a common question at the time.65

Indeed, Agudat HaRabbanim spoke to thistopic in the herem document, and Rabbi Israel Rosenberg also mentioned itin his interview with the New York Times.66 Te answer showed a consistentparanoia: Agudat HaRabbanim legitimately eared that Orthodox Jews would


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pick up Kaplans siddurbecause o its traditional physical appearance. Teywould then unwittingly begin using it, alling victim to its heresies!

Rabbi Joshua rachtenbergs comments in the 1945American Jewish YearBookunderscore the conusion that even educated Jews elt about the decisionto excommunicate Kaplan and not the Reormers:

Te militant implication o this act is all the more strongly underscored bythe act that the Union had not seen t to adopt such a stand against anyother o the many unorthodox prayer books previously issued during itsorty-three year history.67

Ultimately Kaplans ideologies were new but no more heretical than thoseo many other Jews. But since Kaplans heresy looked similar to Orthodox textsand he oered a public, particularly boisterous, threat to the traditional view,

Agudat HaRabbanim elt the need to respond orceully. Tis excommunicationmarked the opportunity to reassert a claim on the American Jewish landscapeby bringing down a zealous gure like Kaplan; and, even more important, itpresented Agudat HaRabbanim a chance to contest the entire Conservativemovement.

Effects of the HeremDid the excommunication accomplish any tangible political gain or

Agudat HaRabbanim? Ater all, or an excommunication to have an eect, thecondemnedas well as the Jewish communityhad to acknowledge and abideby the decree. In a pre-emancipated society, the herem aected every part oan individuals lie, since the central Jewish authorities controlled every aspecto community liesocial, economic, and spiritual. Te herem epitomized theideals o the Old World, and Agudat HaRabbanim used it as an attempt toregain control o New Yorks Jews and to illustrate that its system still workedquite well in America. But in America, there was no court o Jewish law to whichall Jews turned, and there was no way even to enorce the decree. Tus, a New

York Timesheadline outlined the basic problemand the ultimate ironyoa modern excommunication in a single phrase: Group o Orthodox rabbisexcommunicate author o prayer book though he is not a member.68

For dierent reasons, both Kaplan and the Union o Orthodox Rabbis sawJudaism as slowly collapsing, and each sought solutions to the problem. However,the two views exemplied completely opposite approaches: one working to uniydierent streams o belie and practice, the other stoutly standing against suchplurality. Tus, their battle became not how best to benet the Jewish people

by arguing against another ideology, but rather how to ght the individual whopersonied that ideology.


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Everyone Has an Opinion:America Responds to the Herem

he pain o the herem struck Kaplanimmediately, particularly in light o the burningo the siddurjust one month ater the victoryover Nazi Europe. He voiced this throughoutthe months o June and July in his journals andpublicly to the Jewish elegraphic Agency:

It is just too bad that men who call themselvesrabbis should in this day and age resort tothe barbarous procedure o outlawing a manwithout giving him a hearing, and to the Nazipractice o burning books that displease them.God save us rom such leadership and rom thedisgrace it is likely to bring upon Jews.69

But the event also directly aected his am-ily. Shortly ater the herem, Kaplans youngestdaughter Selma went to the local kosher bakery to buy hallah and cakes or theSabbath. But because o Agudat HaRabbanims declaration, the clerk wouldnot even serve her. Tey said, sorry, she explained. Tey just didnt want

anything to do with that heretic Mordecai Kaplan.70

News o the excommunication literally made its way around the world aswell; Proessor Max Arzt o the JS described how a U.S. Marine came acrossthe New York Timesarticle while on a ship in the Pacic Ocean, and thoughhe came rom a yeshiva background, he was deeply dismayed by the herem andultimately eared or the uture o the Jewish people.71

Conservative Jewish leaders expressed concerns similar to Kaplans, ear-ing that outsiders to Judaism might believe that the excommunication andbook burning represented the unanimous decision o American Jews. Tus,the nal paragraph o the Rabbinical Assemblys (RA) resolution about theherem stated:

We assure the public at large that the action o the Agudat Harabbanim isin violation o the eelings o the overwhelming majority o American Jewry,whose loyalty to Judaism expresses itsel not only through ritual observanceand ethical conduct but also through a genuine respect or the reedom omans conscience.72

Both or Kaplan and the Conservative movement, intellectual reedomstood as the central doctrine that hadto remain open in America. Ultimately,the Conservative movement had nearly as much to lose rom this herem asKaplan himsel; i Agudat HaRabbanim could excommunicate Kaplan, then

Mordecai Kaplan

(Courtesy American Jewish Archives)


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the institution that housed him also would also be severely threatened. Aboveall, the Conservative movement, particularly its seminary, needed the abilityto question all aspects o Judaism in a ree, democratic environment, even i itvehemently disagreed with the contents o the sidduritsel.

In July, Kaplan wrote a three-column deense o himsel in the Hebrew

newspaper HaDoar, responding not only to the herem but also to the entireworldview o the Union o Orthodox Rabbis.73 Kaplan was particularly rus-trated that Agudat HaRabbanim could issue the herem or political reasonsbut couch it in religious terms. Just as this was an opportunity or AgudatHaRabbanim to attack Kaplan, Kaplan could re back with that same gusto.

While his personal anger and pain cannot be ignored, he legitimately earedhow the outside world would view this event, at a time when Jews needed torally international support or a Jewish state. What will sweep the hearts o

the nations to us that they will give us a nation and the permission to governourselves? he questioned.74

But ironically, by excommunicating Kaplan, Agudat HaRabbanim almostcompletely removed the issue o theology rom the discussion.75 No longercould Conservative and Reorm rabbis argue the merits o the documentscontent, because they had to deend Kaplan against the Union o OrthodoxRabbis undamentalism. Disagreeing with the prayer book actually was thenorm in America at the time, but because Agudat HaRabbanim had resorted

to such extreme measures, public condemnation o the siddursuddenly becamea political aux pas. Kaplan, in seeking to educate about the excommunication,placed a notice in the New York Timesto advertise his session at the Societyor the Advancement o Judaism, titled Excommunication vs. Freedomo Worship.76

Te Reorm rabbinical assembly, too, deeply disagreed with the merits othe siddur, but the Central Conerence o American Rabbis (CCAR) thoroughlycondemned the actions o Agudat HaRabbanim and did not address the contents

o the sidduritsel.Tis shocking action violates the very spirit o reedom o

thought and the tolerance which we cherish in our country, reads a drat othe statement rom the CCAR, continuing,

It is an expression o bigotry. Without taking sides in the theological issuesinvolved, we nevertheless must condemn unreservedly the revival o medievalacts o excommunication and book burning. When some rabbis, who areout o touch with the modern spirit, indulge themselves in such outgrownpractices, they make themselves ridiculous and impair the good name o theentire rabbinate.77

Instead o overturning the new balance o power in American Judaism,the herem orced virtually every Jewish organization to react against AgudatHaRabbanim, ultimately demoting its authority over American Jewry.


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JTS Faculty Members Break SilenceWhile most o the American Jewish community remained silent about

the content o the siddur, preerring instead to tackle what seemed to be thetyrannical tactics o Agudat HaRabbanim, three rabbis rom JS did attackthe prayer books theologyand the theology o Kaplan himsel. Rabbis LouisGinzberg, Saul Lieberman, and Alexander Marx lambasted not just the siddurbut indeed Kaplans entire career as a rabbi. Tough Kaplan elt the wratho many Jewish leaders because o the prayer book, the condemnation o hiscolleagues proved to be particularly hurtul, in part because o the intimatecontact he had with them.

Te publication o the siddurand the ensuing herem marked the culmina-tion o what the three rabbis elt were Kaplans heresies, and the events gavethem an ideal occasion to condemn Kaplan publicly. While not in the same

language as a religious edict, their letter to HaDoarserved as a public outcryagainst Kaplans rabbinical career.78 Tey not only wished or Kaplan to leavethe Seminary, but they also attempted to denigrate him to all other institutionsby portraying him as a raud.79 Tis response represented a small victory orthe Union o Orthodox Rabbis: While it was not successul in destroying JS,it managed to get the Seminarys most renowned aculty members to respondto its decrees. Agudat HaRabbanim may have been weak in the mid-1940s,but it was not dead.

Ginzberg, Lieberman, and Marx saw it as their responsibility to delegitimizeKaplan, so that people would not heed him in the uture.80 Yet the three rabbistook on a much more dened task than the Union o Orthodox Rabbis did.Rather than attack an entire movement, they chose to attack an individualandone whom they knew personally. Teir letter provided particularly compellingarguments, because they knew the intricacies o Jewish law much better thanKaplana act that they were not araid to state blatantly in the letter:

Dr. Kaplan, teacher o homiletics in our Rabbinical seminary, is a great

expert in his department. But his is not representative in the almudic or inthe Rabbinic literature and their wide range. He does not know nor can herecognize the truth, and he does not willully intend to rebel against it.81

Te rabbis picked apart Kaplans argumentsound primarily in the letterhe had written to HaDoarthat Kaplan had used to deend himsel against

Agudat HaRabbanims attacks.82 In that letter, Kaplan used textual proos toattempt to demonstrate that the halakhic system itsel allowed or a group toostracize an individual. o emphasize the absurdity, he even asserted that AgudatHaRabbanim had the responsibility to burn his sidduraccording to the almudiclaw that a orah scroll that was written by a min83 would be burned.84

Tough the rabbis did not agree with issuing the herem and certainlyopposed burning the siddur, they elt nonetheless that the Union o Orthodox


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Rabbis acted out o correct principles in initiating the banthey simply executedit incorrectly. Ginzberg, Lieberman, and Marx even went so ar as to deendthe actions o Agudat HaRabbanim, accepting that the organization did notpurposeully burn the siddurthough the event clearly happened as part o theormal ceremony. In their own letter, the three rabbis attempted to pick apart

Kaplans halakhic argument and interpretation o the texts, correctly statingthat the law o burning the orah scroll even o a heretic only applied to thetechnical category o a min; thereore, Kaplan had misinterpreted the denitiono a min to imply any heretic.85 However, it appears that the rabbis never readthe ocial herem decree and thus gave the Union o Orthodox Rabbis creditthat it did not deserve. Because Agudat HaRabbanim dubbed Kaplan with thetechnical term min,it legally could, or even had the obligation to, burn thesiddura act the Seminary rabbis would have realized i they had read Agudat

HaRabbanims publications.

The Herem in Its ContextKaplans heresy held particular weight or JS because he wrote and

taught these views to students at the institution. While the Seminary publiclyreuted the claims that Kaplan made about Judaism and asserted that herepresented a dierent worldview rom its ocial stance, ultimately he wasable to crat a vision or his entire movement without permission to do so. 86

JS proessor Rabbi Neil Gilman reected on how a donor once called JSPresident Finkelstein during the 1950s and oered a substantial donation inexchange or ring Kaplan:

So I said, Why didnt you?

So he said, How could I?he was my teacher.

So I said, Oh, come on.

So he said, No seriously. I spent my entire career trying to ensure theSeminarys academic respectability in the American academic world. All Ihad to do was declare one teacher that I disagreed with and re him, and Iwould have ruined the Seminarys reputation orever.87

o Finkelstein, ring Kaplan would have represented much more thanreleasing a member o the aculty. It would have indicated the attempt to squelcha dissenting voice.

Gilman continued:

I suppose its a ascinating story because it gives a peek into Finkelsteinsvalues. He was prepared to tolerate what he Im sure elt was a very subversivevoice on the aculty in order to make sure that, academically, the Seminarysreputation at this point would remain intact.


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In reecting on the tumultuous 1940s, Finkelstein dubbed the decade moremiraculous even than the Exodus rom Egypt, with the maniestation o theDeity readily discerned in almost any aspect o the downall o Hitler.88Surely Finkelstein had good reason to rame his rst ten years as leader o theSeminary with such an extreme characterization; he had used his position to

thrust JS onto the world scene. Seeking to neutralize totalitarian orces acrossan ocean and to uniy a vital center both in America and abroad, Finkelsteinstrove his entire career to bring people together. He sought not only to uniy

American Jewry but also to transorm JS into theleading voice or AmericanJudaism. Indeed, it was his hope or the Seminary to become a uniying orceor all American religion. Finkelstein said to the RA in 1942,

I have little doubt that it can only be through the strengthening o religiouswork in all denominations, and the creation o better understanding andincreased cooperation among them, that we can nd our way out o theslough o despond o the twentieth century.89

By strengthening the center, ultimately the Seminary helped to limit groupssuch as Agudat HaRabbanim rom wielding power with extreme measures suchas excommunications. According to Rabbi Morris Adler in an address at theConerence on the Role o Judaism in the Modern World:

he Jewish heological Seminary represents the American JewishCommunitys coming o age. It is that movement which seeks to transormthe population o Jews in America into a Jewish center, in line with all thegreat centers during the ages which have enriched and ructied Judaism. Itseeks to convert a settlement o Jews into a Jewish society, into a Jewish com-munity, and the common denominator upon which this Jewish populationshall be united into a society will not be the pressure rom without or thegeneral humanitarian principles o mercy or o ear, but a sel-identicationwith the culture o Israel.90

Te 1944 JS conerence, Approaches to National Unity, epitomized inboth theme and content the wider message that Finkelstein sought to imple-ment during his tenure. Only through breaking denominational boundariesthat had previously separated them, joining in a democracy o thought, couldpeople realize the ideal o pluralism. Moreover, the introduction to the coner-ence volume suggests that the problem was not simply an academic issue.91Conerences during this time elevated the democratic ideal and sought to activateit in practice. Fittingly, just months ater the Allies declared victory, the 1945

conerence addressed Approaches to Group Understanding. World War IIhad represented the ultimate breakdown in diplomatic relations, a phenomenonthat many blamed on a lack o communication in the world community. Tisproblem transcended religions and cultures.


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We cannot bomb ourselves into physical security or moral unity, statedthe introduction to the conerence. Te release o atomic energy has notabolished our continuing moral problems; it has made them more urgent.Mankind is seeking the way to cooperation. Its intellectual leaders can helpby overcoming temptations to set themselves against each other, by learning

to labor and think together.92

Tis passage encapsulates exactly why the strategy o Agudat HaRabbanimailed in this new erait attempted to bomb [itsel ] into physical security. Inan age that treasured an ecumenical spirit, Agudat HaRabbanim resorted toburning a sidduras its ultimate cry against Kaplans heresy. While JS neverocially supported Kaplan, it certainly protected him. More important, itcould only support him against outside attack, based on the democratic idealthat philosophies were meant to be debated on the intellectual battleeld, not

attacked in an actual state o war. As soon as the Union o Orthodox Rabbisburned a book in 1945, it removed itsel rom democratic discourse, eectivelyisolating itsel rom the majority o the American Jewish community.

The Sociological Triumph of Conservative Judaism in the 1950sWhile JS sought to inuence American Judaism and even global religion,

the Conservative laity and synagogue rabbis operated largely on their own inresponse to the sociological phenomenon o suburbanizationperhaps the

best explanation or the movements overwhelming success during the 1950s.While Finkelstein sponsored his ideology on the Upper West Side o New York,Conservative rabbis translated it to their constituent congregations. Explainssociologist Marshall Sklare:

Suburbanization brought with it the problem o the maintenance o Jewishidentity, and it was to the synagogue that the new Jewish suburbanite tendedto look or identity-maintenance. And Conservatism exemplied the type osynagogue that was most appealing to the Conservative Jew.93

More than ever, as urban sprawl broadened the geographical landscapeo American Jews, it also marked the doom o Agudat HaRabbanim and itsinsular, centripetal model o Jewish religious lie. From a practical point o view,controlling New York Citys Jews in the 1950s no longer held the same politi-cal clout as in the rst hal o the twentieth century, since many had alreadymoved out o the city. With an ideology that did not adapt to the expanding,increasingly multiaceted Jewish society that incorporated the variety o beliesin America, the Union o Orthodox Rabbis slowly dwindled. As Louis Bernstein

described, Te largest and most important rabbinic group o the rst hal othis century, the Agudat Harabbonim, will live on only in the yellow pages oold Yiddish newspapers.94


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Where Jews had previously lived in relatively homogenous, compact com-munities in cities, they now aced the reality o a truly diverse community.One sociologist o the time reported, Te environment is strange. Te Jewishresidents are no longer the majority or plurality which they were, or elt them-selves to be, in the urban neighborhoods or blocks rom which they came.95

Tough Finkelstein was thinking in broad terms about the place o the Jew inAmerica when he tried to expand the inuence o the Seminary in the 1940s,his eorts would serve the altered needs o Jews just one decade later. Withoutplanning or a specic sociological phenomenon in American history, Finkelsteinmanaged to institute programs that catered to the novelties o the 1950s andt a new model o Jewish lie and culture. In large part due to his eorts, thecenter had seized control o discourse in the Jewish community at large. Tere

was a new spirit o engagement with Jewish lie, and a ringe organization no

longer could seize control over the community, as Agudat HaRabbanim hadattempted to do or much o the rst hal o the twentieth century. Indeed, itslack o engagement with the rest o the Jewish community led to its declineduring the 1950s.

ConclusionIt is not surprising that, just one month ater America declared victory

over Nazi Germany, Agudat HaRabbanims declaration o the herem sent a jolt through American Jews collective conscience. Particularly when com-bined with the burning o a holy book, an excommunication marks a reusalto engage in democratic discourse; a herem launches a group attack upon anindividual, attempting to render him incapacitated in every segment o hislie. Such an act might have caused a similar reaction in any era. But in 1945,

with the backdrop o World War II and a rising spirit o cultural pluralism inpeacetime American religious lie, the herem and, particularly, the burningo a prayer bookrecalling Nazi tacticsmarked a decisive clash in valuesbetween Agudat HaRabbanim and American norms o tolerance. Ater decades

o attempting to assert its sovereignty over Jewish religious lie in America,the Union o Orthodox Rabbis issued the most drastic proclamation possibleaccording to its worldview, invoking conict rather than religious debate anddemocratic participation. Te herem proved more than ever that the absolutistviews o Agudat HaRabbanim and other such extremist authorities were nolonger compatible with American lie. Indeed, the next teen years wouldrepresent a surge toward religious universalism and diversity, notions antitheti-cal to Agudat HaRabbanims sel-segregation. Te discord provoked by their

symbolic burning and the resistance to their authoritarian decree displayedclearly how their command over Jewish thought and behavior had dwindled

within the American Jewish community.


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Looking retrospectively at the event, Yeshiva Universitys Rabbi NormanLamm described the burning as disastrous or the cause o Orthodoxyin America:

I we want to win people over to Orthodoxy, we need to present ourselves

as measured, mature, and moderate people with deep aith and the rightpractice, but we do not insult others and we do not damage or condemnthem. Coming out with issurim [decrees that orbid particular actions] againsteveryone else is like another Fatwa. When I was younger there was a hereticby the name o Mordecai Kaplan, and the Agudas HaRabbonim had thiswhole big book burning party. I thought it was ridiculous to have a bookburning in the twentieth century. It didnt make anybody decide to becomemore religiously observant. Nobody who was reading his books said[,] Iimportant Orthodox rabbis burned them, were not going to read them. I

anything, it aroused interest in people who otherwise would not have wantedto read these books. But in addition, what it accomplished was that it gotpeople to look at the Orthodox as anatics. Tats no way to make riendsand win people over to Orthodoxy.96

Tough Kaplan was personally hurt by the attacks o Agudat HaRabbanimand the three rabbis rom the JS, ultimately his philosophies o crating apluralistic religion and ashioning the synagogue as the centerpiece o communalgrowth proved to be the guiding oundation or American Jewish lie during

the 1950s. Meanwhile, the views o Agudat HaRabbanimand in act theorganization itseladed during the decade ollowing the herem.

At the center o this altered religious consciousness stood JS and LouisFinkelstein. No longer would the institution be isolationist. Under Finkelstein,the Seminary thrust itsel onto the world scene and attempted to shape aglobal consciousness o democratic values, ones dened in stark contrast to thevalues o the Nazis. Tough the aculty could not accept Kaplans theology,particularly in the orm o a liturgical text, nally the Seminary had to protect

Kaplan, because Finkelstein elt it was essential or Kaplan to be able to voicehis opinion in a democratic environment. Unlike Agudat HaRabbanim, JSdid not ceremoniously expel members. Kaplan would be able to speak his mindrom within the Jewish community, despite the immense pressure that manyincluding his own distinguished senior colleaguesplaced on Finkelstein todismiss Kaplan rom the aculty. In contrast to Agudat HaRabbanim, thecultural climate in America during the postwar years ostered ways to interact

with varying notions o religion, ortiying the center and virtually ridding theAmerican landscape o undamentalism in the 1950s, during which time theConservative movement would dominate.97

Agudat HaRabbanims herem attempted to ostracize Kaplan completelyrom the American Jewish community and to leave the Conservative move-ment crippled. Ironically, however, it strengthened JS and its ideologies to


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unimagined levels o inuence in both Jewish culture and the wider Americanculture o the 1950s. In eect, Agudat HaRabbanim had excommunicated itselrom American lie by issuing its herem decree against Kaplan.

Zachary Silver is a rabbinical student at the Jewish eological Seminary, where he will

also receive a Masters in Modern Jewish Studies. He began researching this topic for hissenior thesis at the University of Pennsylvania. e thesis was awarded the PresidentsAward for Undergraduate Research and the American Jewish Historical Societys LeoWasserman Prize.

Notes1Te Hebrew Agudat HaRabbanim literally means the association o rabbis and includes thearticle the as part o the name o the group. Tereore, or the purposes o this paper, I donot use another article when reerring to the combined term Agudat HaRabbanim, as it wouldbe redundant. However, all quoted passages remain as they were in the original. ranslationsrom Hebrew to English are mine unless otherwise specied.2Mel Scults biography o Kaplan mentions that the event occurred, but he does not believe that

Agudat HaRabbanim burned the book as part o the ormal ceremony. Rather, he says thatthe burning occurred incidentally at the back o the room. However, Agudat HaRabbanimsdocuments illustrate that it was a previously scripted ormula. Jerey Gurock and Jacob J.Schacters book,A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community, addresses the excommunicationand disputes Scults claim that there was no intentional book burning. See Scult,Judaism Facesthe Twentieth Century: A Biography of Mordecai Kaplan (Detroit: Wayne State Press, 1993) andGurock and Schacter,A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community:Mordecai M. Kaplan,Orthodoxy and American Judaism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).

3In 1934, Kaplan published his maniesto,Judaism as a Civilization, which JS ChancellorArnold Eisen has dubbed the single most inuential book o its generation. As I will discuss,Agudat HaRabbanim deliberately chose the siddurrather than a book o philosophy to pinpointKaplans heresy. See Kaplan,Judaism as a Civilization: Toward a Reconstruction of American-

Jewish Life(New York: Te Macmillan Company, 1934).4Kaplan aced mixed reactions rom the aculty. Most notably, Louis Ginzberg, Saul Lieberman,and Alexander Marx wrote a strong letter condemning the siddur, though they did not agree

with the herem as a means o condemning Kaplan (see below).5Tis occurred largely because o an article in the New York Times,which covered the event.See Orthodox Rabbis Excommunicate Author o Prayer Book Tough He Is Not a Member,

New York Times(15 June 1945): A11.6Kaplan elt that the practice o excommunication maniested the inherit problems o the entirehalakhicsystem, because rabbis were able to wield it as a weapon against those who threatenedtheir authority. See Kaplan, Comments on Dr. Gordis Paper, Proceedings of the Rabbinical

Assembly(1942): 97. Kaplan also noted inJudaism as a Civilization the inherent anachronismo an excommunication in the modern age:

Te social structure o Jewish lie was hitherto o the ecclesiastical type, or though therabbi exercised his authority with the consent o those to whom he ministered, the orah,the supernatural revelation o Gods will, was the sanction o the laws he enunciated. It

was by virtue o that sanction that the rabbi could apply the weapon o excommunication.

With the rise o modern ideology and the denial o the validity o the supernatural sanction,the exercise o excommunication was eliminated rom Jewish lie (208).

Kaplan states that the excommunication was irrelevant in modern Jewish lie because modernsno longer believed in the sovereignty o a supernatural Godan assumption that was ar romuniversal. I argue that Kaplans thesis about excommunications does not rest on personal theology


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but is reective o the social structure o the modern Jewish community, which Kaplan alsoemphasizes throughout much o the rest o the maniesto.7Mordecai Kaplan, Eugene Kohn, and Ira Eisenstein, eds., e New Haggadah (New York:Behrman House, 1941).8For a comprehensive article on the haggadah controversy, see Jack Wertheimer, Kaplan vs. TeGreat Do-Nothings: Te Inconclusive Battle over Te New Haggadah,Conservative Judaism 45,no. 3(Summer 1993): 2037. It should be noted that this was a unanimous aculty reproach oKaplan because Robert Gordis elt coerced to sign this letter. As noted below, Gordis disagreed

with Kaplans approach to Jewish ritual and halakhah but did not agree with the tone o thisletter and the mode o rebuke. He would later apologize to Kaplan or being a part o what wasa hurtul personal attack. See Ira Eisenstein, Reconstructing Judaism: An Autobiography(New

York: Te Reconstructionist Press, 1986), 165.9On a basic level, a siddurdiers rom a haggadah because Sabbath siddurim are used weekly,

whereas haggadotare used a maximum o twice yearly. Additionally, a sidduris a way or peopleto connect to the divine, whereas the haggadah acilitates Jews recalling a collective history. Botho these acts indicate that Kaplans choice to publish the haggadah beore the siddurserved as

a test to see how the Jewish world would respond to his liturgical works. As it turned out, theresponse to the haggadah was a unanimous letter o castigation, whereas the response to thesiddurwent to another level.10Finkelstein was named chancellor o JS in 1949; subsequent leaders o the institutioncontinue to bear this title.11Tis was part o a continued trend o pressure to dismiss Kaplan rom JS, which originatedin the Cyrus Adler era o leadership. Kaplan elt such unease at the Seminary that he resignedin 1927 to go to Stephen Wises Jewish Institute o Religion (JIR), only to change his mind andreturn to JS within the week. Te pressure to dismiss Kaplan was particularly acute in the caseo the siddur, because the aculty had already explicitly reprimanded Kaplan or his haggadah.

An example o chastisement can be seen in a satirical letter rom Jason Cohen:I was very happy to read in that great book by the head o the Seminary, Pro. Kaplan, thatat last you were sensible enough to abolish the outwork Dietary Laws. May I suggestthat to publish this great epoch making step on yor [sic] part you arrange an outing to takeplace next Saturday aternoon. I shall be only too glad to urnish the buses and pay or thedinner at some prominent seashore resort. Tere you could enjoy the nest CLAM BAKEor PIG ROAS [emphasis his] ever served by a Gentile to Jewish Rabbis. You will all oyou have a very ne time and at the same time let the world know that the old superstitionabout the Sabbath and ood have no place in modern Jewish lie.

See Letter rom Jason Cohen to anonymous Rabbi, 30 June 1934, Faculty Files, RG 3, Box 2,

Folder 1, Te Ratner Center Archives o Te Library o JS, New York. For more inormationon Kaplans displeasure at the seminary, see Scult, 203240.12For inormation about the hotel when it was built, see Flock to Inspect the Biggest Hotel,New York Times(30 December 1912): 18.13Yiddish Radio Project, http://www.yiddishradioproject.org/exhibits/history/history.php3?content=photos&pg=1&photo_pg=2. (accessed 19 April 2010).14Ibid.15 Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, Inc., Invitation to 1945 convention, JewishReconstructionist Foundation Records, I71, Box 8, Folder 5, the American Jewish HistoricalSociety (AJHS), New York.

16Te exclusion o Baruch Spinoza rom the seventeenth-century Amsterdam Sephardiccommunity has oten been taken as a symbolic opening salvo o the emerging Enlightenmentemancipation rom closed religious sectarianism. See Steven Nadler,Spinoza: A Life(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2001), 11654.


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17Kaplan Diary, 16 June 1945 (Volume 13, 19441946), ound in the Ira and Judith KaplanEisenstein Archives at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Philadelphia.18It is signicant that Agudat HaRabbanim uses the term rabbistransliterated as such inthe Hebrewor JS graduates, instead o the Hebrew word or rabbis, rabbanim.19Aseat HaHerem, HaPardes19, no. 4 (July 1945): 2.20

For an extensive comparison between Kaplans text and the 1946 Conservative Sabbath andFestival Prayer Book, see Eric Caplan, From Ideology to Liturgy: Reconstructionist Worship andAmerican Liberal Judaism (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2002), 112120. Caplansuggests that the Conservative RA editors shared many o the same theological concerns thatKaplan did, but they responded to them by changing the English translations rather thanthe Hebrew prayers themselves. Kaplan and his students certainly knew the contents o theConservative siddur, because both Milton Steinberg and Ira Eisenstein were on the originalcommittee or the siddur, and the main editor o the text, Morris Silverman, conerred withKaplan during the editing process. See Caplan, 112.21On Burning o a Prayer Book, e Jewish Exponent(22 June 1945): 4.22

In deending Kaplan, the RA mentioned explicitly that while the actions o AgudatHaRabbanim were abhorrent, the Conservative movement did not endorse the siddur. See OnBurning o a Prayer Book. Te RA published e Sabbath and Festival Prayer Bookin 1946.23Rosenberg specically pointed to Kaplans excision o shefokh hamatkha, a paragraph inthe haggadah that asks God to Pour out [Gods] wrath on the enemy nations that do notknow [God].24Kaplan also conronted this theologically and philosophically troubling issue while writingthe haggadah, particularly in relation to responding to the challenges o the Holocaust. See

Jack Cohen,Major Philosophers of Jewish Prayer in the Twentieth Century(New York: FordhamUniversity Press, 2000), 163164. Eisenstein reected on this in his autobiography:

I the haggadah was to be ediying, and i our purpose was to engage the attention oyoung people, we should omit all texts which smacked o cruelty and vengeance. I cantruly testiy that he never reckoned with possible gentile reactions. Knuckling under wasa stance he resolutely eschewed.

See Eisenstein, Reconstructing Judaism, 164.25Aseat HaHerem, 2.26Ibid. Also see Simon Noveck,Milton Steinberg: Portrait of a Rabbi(New York: Ktav PublishingHouse, Inc., 1978), 183.27Te rst psalm speaks about not ollowing in the counsel o the wicked, a tting liturgicalpiece or an excommunication.28It is unclear who actually burned the siddur, as the report in HaPardesuses the passive voice.See Aseat HaHerem, 2.29Noveck, 183.30Aseat HaHerem, 2.31Te July 1945 issue oHaPardesillustrates this very irony. On the same page as part o theheremdocument, there is another article titled Et Hasereia Asher Sara HaShem: Bame Enahem?(Te burning that God burned: How shall we gain mercy?), which laments the passing oRabbi Aharon Pechenikss ather, murdered by the Nazis. Te parallelism o burningonecommitted againstthe Jewish people and one bythe Jewish peopleis eerie.32

Nosah Hahlatat HaHerem, HaPardes19, no. 4 (July 1945): 3.33Ibid.34Ibid.


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35Te document cites Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 33, Megillah 17. See Nosah HahlatatHaHerem, 3.36Following the statement, Tis man raises his hand to scatter against the Members o the Great

Assembly, the text inexplicably spells out the ollowing word twice in Hebrew: ! 37 Jerey Gurock, American Jewish Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective(Hoboken, NJ: KtavPublishing House, 1996), 7.38Kaplan was the rst rabbi to introduce English sermons to the afuent Upper East Sidesynagogue, Kehilath Jeshurun. While Agudat HaRabbanim did not prevent his hiring, Kaplanbelieved that the organization ensured that his title would be minister instead o rabbi,because he did not receive Orthodox ordination. For more inormation about Kaplan at Kehilath

Jeshurun, see Scult, 69. For more on the conict at the Upper West Sides Jewish Center, whereKaplan subsequently served, see Schacter and Gurock, chapter 5.39Scult, 69.40Ibid.41Retrospectively, it seems that Kaplans article lays the groundwork or his philosophy inJudaism

as a Civilization.Tis statement rom Agudat HaRabbanim appeared in multiple newspaperson 21 January 1921, including Hebrew Standard, HaToren, e Jewish Gazette,and HaIbri.Reproduction o articles ound in letter rom Kaplan to Cyrus Adler, 27 January 1921, RG 3,Box 2, Folder 1, Te Ratner Center Archives o Te Library o JS, New York.42Te editorial also classied Kaplans ideas as nothing less than heresy and his acts as treasonto the cause he aects to serve. See Gurock and Schacter, 110.43Louis Bernstein, e Emergence of the English Speaking Orthodox Rabbinate(Ann Arbor, MI:University Microlms, 1977), 262.44In 1933, in response to Agudat HaRabbanims petition o the Reorm rabbinate to keep kosher,Reorm Rabbi Max Raisin o Congregation Bnai Jeshurun o New Jersey responded that indeed

the slugest or the top o the kashrutempire was alienating Jews everywhere:Unortunately the cause o real kashrut is hurt by its supposed riends. Te OrthodoxRabbis o the community, in Patterson, New York and it would seem everywhere ghtamong themselves on this very question. What one Rabbi declares to be kosher the otherRabbi will declare to be trea.

See Aaron Rakeet-Rothko, e Silver Era in American Jewish Orthodoxy(New York: YeshivaUniversity Press, 1988), 133.45Ibid. Tough Yeshiva College had an active relationship with the Orthodox Union, the maincompetitor o Agudat HaRabbanim or kashrutsupremacy, even when taken cynically, theeditorial expresses broad views about Agudat HaRabbanims struggle to maintain a rm grasp

on American Jewry during the 1930s.46Kaplan Diary, 23 June 1945.47Rakeet-Rothko, 114.48Te teshuvahwas ocially approved in 1935 by the Conservative movements Committee on

Jewish Law. It was later published more completely in a volume devoted to the legal concept o theagunah.See Epstein, Lishelat HaAgunah (New York: Ginsberg Linotype Company, 1940).49HaPardes10, no. 1 (April 1936): 3, English translation cited in Marc B. Shapiro,Saul Liebermanand the Orthodox(Scranton, PA: University o Scranton Press, 2006), 1213.50According to religious law, only a man has the right to initiate the steps or a divorce. Tereore,

women can be let chained (agunah) to their husbands and unable to remarry. Epsteinsuggested that the couple could sign a statement at the wedding that would legally authorizethe rabbinic courts to issue the documentation necessary or the divorce pre-acto according toagreed-upon conditions. Epstein rst published A Solution to theAgunah Problem and thetranslated Hebrew version, Hazaah Lemaan akanat Hagunot, in 1930 in the orm o an


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article. In 1935, he published the legal responsum, Adjustment o the Jewish marriage Lawsto Present-Day Conditions. For each o these documents, see Proceedings of the Committee on

Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement 19271970, II, ed. David Golinkin(New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 1997), 619672.51Designed to diverge rom Maimonidess Tirteen Articles o Faith, the Wants sought to makea demand upon Jewish unity, as Kaplan ound it impossible to agree on abstract principles, such

as Maimonidess original creed. See Kaplan, Communings of the Spirit, ed. Mel Scult (Detroit:Wayne State University Press, 2001), 218.52Kaplan, Te Tirteen Wants, http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/wants.htm (accessed 19

April 2010).53Ira Eisenstein, Mordecai Kaplan, and Eugene Kohn, eds., Sabbath Prayer Book(New York:Te Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945), 1.54Kaplan Diary, 16 May 1945.55Caplan, 53.56Eisenstein, Kaplan, and Kohn, xxiii.

57My teacher, Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, noted that as part o theMusafservicethe additionalservice on Shabbat that accounts or the extra sacrices o the dayKaplan wrote a liturgicalintroduction that praises individuals during emple times or tangibly giving o themselves toGod. While Kaplan is oten portrayed as one who excised texts indiscriminately because theliturgy lacked application to modern lie, he had the utmost respect or the emple cult and was

jealous that moderns could not experience this tangible connection with the Divine:

Our worship is one o prayer and praise. But when we think o the piety o our athers,who rom their meager store o cattle and grain, the yield o the shepherds care and thearmers toil, oered their best in the service o God, can we be content with a gi t o mere

words that costs us neither labor nor privation? Shall we not eel impelled to devote our

substance to the service o God? Shall we not give o our store to the relie o suering,the healing o sickness, the dispelling o ignorance and error, the righting o wrongs andthe strengthening o aith?

See Eisenstein, Kaplan, and Kohn, 189191.58For example, Kaplan conceived that God could be explained according to the laws o nature.Tereore, he excised parts o the siddurthat petitioned God to change the weather, such as thesecond paragraph o the Shema. Instead o the traditional recitation o Deuteronomy 11:1321, hebegan with Deuteronomy 11:21 and continued with a Deuteronomy 16, which states that i oneheeds God one will be blessed in all places. In this case, he eliminated the idea that God wouldreward people with rain, a theology that could not be logically deduced through reason.

Kaplan also eliminated reerences to the selection o Israel, seen most clearly through howhe changed the blessings over the orah rom Blessed are you Lord our God that chose usrom the nations and gave us the orah to Blessed are you that brought us closer to your

work and gave us your orah. Such changes in the liturgy would later become a staple inReconstructionist texts. For a complete catalogue o changes that Kaplan made to the liturgy,see Caplan, 46125.59Letter rom JS aculty to Kaplan, 30 April 1941, as cited in Wertheimer, Kaplan vs. TeGreat Do-Nothings, 25.60Scult, Kaplans Heschel: A View rom the Diary, Conservative Judaism 54, no. 4 (Summer2002): 5.61

Ibid., 7. Kaplan drew immensely rom the philosophy and educational theory o twentieth-century thinker John Dewey.62Eisenstein, Kaplan, and Kohn, 236565.


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63Kaplan would also co-edit a prayer book devoted to American holidays. While contemporaryreaders might not view this book as a siddur,per se, Kaplan and his coeditors situate the bookas such, as the introduction illustrates:

Each program in this book has the orm o a religious service. It begins with an invocationor a message conveying the importance o the day. Tis is ollowed by varied selections inprose and poetry, some o them designed or reading by the leader, some or responsive

reading by leader and assembly, some or silent reading. It is recommended that anaddress by a person qualied to relate the message o the day to current social and moralproblems be inserted at some appropriate point in the service.

See Kaplan, J. Paul Williams, and Kohn, e Faith of America: Prayers, Readings and Songs forthe Celebration of American Holidays(New York: Reconstructionist Press, 1963), xxv. For howthis prayer book ts into Kaplans broader conceptions o American civil religion, see Beth

Wenger, Making American Civilization Jewish: Mordecai Kaplans Civil Religion,JewishSocial Studies12, no. 2 (Winter 2006): 5663.64Nosah Hahlatat HaHerem, 3. Tis paragraph reads in ull:

Tose who ask why Agudat HaRabbanim did not enact a herem against the Reormers,

who also printed a prayer book, and added and removed rom the liturgy whatever to theirhearts content, and also are inciters and instigators, the answer: Tese same Reormershave already separated rom the community o Israel, or every man o Israel knows that hedoes not have any connection with them (the Reormers). And thegeonim [leading Jewishauthorities] o Israel already declared in their time, such as the Gaon Rabbi Akiva Igger,the Gaon Rabbi Moshe Soer, and the Gaon Rabbi Jacob o Lissa, and the Gaon RabbiMordechai Banet, who were alive during that same era, the beginnings o the creation oReorm emples, and there they ought with them with all o their might and strength.For there were greats o Israel in that day who said, It is more comortable or a Jew toenter a Church and not to enter a Reorm emple. But this same man, Dr. Kaplan, he iswithin [emphasis added] the children o Israel, speaking and behaving as a Jew, and he hasa synagogue where Jews make mistakes by ollowing him and come there to pray. And heserves as an educator o the children Israel, and it is said about him vayaavek ish imo[anda man struggled with him] (Genesis 32:25). And as our sages said (Babylonian almudHullin 91), Like a sage he appeared, and took honor rom Jacob; see the interpretationo Rashi on this passage. So too is the man Dr. Kaplan dressing himsel as a sage (talmidhakham), bringing Jews to ollow ater him, and he is leading them astray rom belie inGod and His orah, which is ar worse than the Reormers. And thereore they did asthey did, according to the law o the orah, lawully and justly.

Te text asserts that the Reormers already separated themselves so much rom traditionaldoctrine that they were no longer a threat to the core, which was not the case with Kaplan, who

clothed himsel as a traditional Jew and sage. Additionally, the great sages o the nineteenthcentury had already ought the battles that needed to be ought with the Reorm movement,and thus Agudat HaRabbanim, which ormed in 1901, did not eel the need to continue thisbattle. Te biblical citation in the passage comes rom the narrative o Jacob wrestling with hisadversary, suggesting that Kaplan will both physically and spiritually injure the Jewish people,Israel. Te almudic citation, as interpreted by Rashi, comes as part o a discussion o howthe man appeared to Jacob in Genesis. Rav Shmuel bar Aha states that the angel appeared to

Jacob clothed as a orah scholar, and thereore Jacob positioned himsel on the let side othe man, as Rav Yehudah said, One who walks to the right o his teacher does not possessproper manners. For that reason, he was able to attack Jacobs right side. In the same way, thistext suggests that Kaplan appears to Israel as a orah scholar but really is an adversary out to

ool and injure the Jewish people.65In the months ollowing the excommunication, Sidney Morgenbesser suggested thatexcommunicating Kaplan was the epitome o hypocrisy:


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I Judaism consists in accepting all o the mitzvoto the orah as binding, why shouldBialik and Brandeis be recognized as Jews? Why are even the Orthodox so proud o Einsteinand Herzl? Seriously, why not excommunicate all Jews who keep their places o businessopen on Saturday? Why not excommunicate all who accept money rom such sources?

Why not excommunicate all who suspect that the Greeks may have had something tocontribute to human values? Why not excommunicate all who may believe that the world

is at least 100,000 years old or those who proclaim in public that America is their homeand not a temporary purgatory? Te truth is that the Orthodox cannot. Tere would beno one o any consequence let.

See Morgenbesser, Is Orthodoxy Consistent with Democracy? e Reconstructionist11, no.10(5 October 1945): 24.66Orthodox Rabbis Excommunicate Author O Prayer Book hough He Is Nota Member, A11.67 Joshua rachtenberg, Religious Activities,American Jewish Year Book47 (19451946):217.68Orthodox Rabbis Excommunicate Author O Prayer Book hough He Is Not

a Member, A11.69Pro. Mordecai M. Kaplan Excommunicated by Orthodox Rabbis, e Jewish Exponent(22 June 1945): 1.70Interview with Selma Goldman, conducted by Marilyn Price, Reconstructionist RabbinicalCollege Oral History Project. here is no halakhic justiication not to sell ood to anexcommunicated individual, and certainly not his children. In addition to this anecdote, oneo the secretaries at Kaplans Society or the Advancement o Judaism quit her job specicallybecause o the decree.71Letter rom Max Arzt to Kaplan, 13 August 1945, Milton Steinberg Collection (P369), Box17, Folder 7 (Reconstructionist Prayer Books), AJHS, New York.72Rabbinical Assembly, Proceedings(1945): 29.73Mikhtav ueshuva BInyan HaHerem Al Sidduro Shel Kaplan, HaDoar25, no. 33 (13

July 1945): 739.74Kaplan Diary, 16 June 1945.75Proessor Chaim chernowitz o the Jewish Institute o Religion, who wrote under the penname o Rav zair, criticized Kaplan in the press, as he had also done ater the publication othe haggadah.Overall, chernowitz was conused about the siddur, or example, suggesting thatKaplans reinterpretation o sacrice was a Christian idea stemming rom non-Jewish sources.He also said that the Hebrew was dicult even or those well-versed in Hebrew. Meanwhile,

the Orthodox Union (OU) wrote its review o the siddurbeore the excommunication edict andthus did not reer to Agudat HaRabbanim in its review. Like Kaplan, the OU also elt that thiswas a time when Judaism needed a saving grace. It just happened that the OU viewed Kaplansdocument as a destructive orce rather than a medium o sa lvation. For the OU, the prayer bookmaniested the very problem acing Jews in America: Te United States o America in a newsad aspect has become the country o undreamt-o possibilities. See Rav zair, A Misguidedand Misleading Siddur, Jewish Criterion (2 November 1945), Milton Steinberg Collection(P369), Box 17, Folder 7, AJHS, New York; Liturgic Blasphemy, e Orthodox Union 12,no. 5 (June 1945): 2. Te Hebrew version o Rav zairs lengthy critique o the siddurappearsas Siddur ellah shel oim uMatim, published in 1946. See Siddur shel oim uMatim,Karhon 7, no. 13 (ishrei 5706): 124.76New York Times(22 June 1945): 15.77Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook(1946): 2829.78Gilui Daat, HaDoar25, no. 39 (1945): 904905. Tis letter was later translated in ADeclaration about Dr. Kaplans Siddur, e Jewish Forum (January 1946): 7.


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79Lieberman in particular showed discontent or Kaplan throughout their careers at the Seminary,especially ater the publication o the siddur. Kaplan describes in his diary how the almudscholar hurriedly walked away rom Kaplan one day when they passed in the hallway. Kaplancould only question Lieberman, Why are you mad at me? See Kaplan Diary, 1 June 1945.80Eli Ginzberg explains that his ather believed in academic reedom, but had little sympathyor those who sought to alter tradition. More important, he had reached the conclusion that

any eort at reconciling historic Judaism with American lie was doomed to ailure. Tereore,Ginzberg elt that Kaplans siddurwas inevitable heresy, one that damaged the Jewish communityat large. As Eli Ginzberg describes, In one o his more sarcastic ormulations, my ather wouldask, What point is there to revise Jewish theology or pants-makers? Eli Ginzberg, Keeper ofthe Law(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society o America, 1966), 143144.81A Declaration about Dr. Kaplans Siddur, 7.82For example, the three rabbis indicated that Kaplan completely misread the act that a heremcondones the assassination o the person banned, when in act the Shulkhan Arukh states thatthe banned individual may actually open a store to maintain a livelihood and the communityhas the obligation to support the lie o the excommunicated; killing the individual would

thereore be considered homicide. Ibid., 8.83Eleventh-century French commentator, Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak (Rashi), denes the wordmin as someone who is an intense idolater, such as a priest.84Mikhtav ueshuvah bInyan Haherem Al Sidduro Shel Kaplan. Te law stems rom RavNachmans opinion in the Babylonian almud, ractate Gittin, 45b. Te text dierentiatesbetween a orah scroll written by a min and agoy, a non-Jew (Christian sensors would laterchange the text to oved kokhavim, idolaters).Rashi understands a min to be someone who is aervent Jewish idolater, such as a priest (aduk bavodat kochavim, kgon komer). Rashi suggeststhat the orah scroll must be burned because it clearly was written or the purpose o idolatry.

Accordingly, a orah scroll written by a non-Jew cannot be used or ritual purposes and thereore

must be hidden [buried].Both MaimonidessMishneh Torah and Jose Karos Shulkhan Aruch codiy this principle inthe legal codes. Te printed edition o the Shulkhan Arukh reads, A Seer orah written by anapikorusmust be burned. Te original reads min instead o apikorus. Tis is apparent romthe commentary on the Shulkhan Arukh oRabbi Shabbatai ben Meir ha-Kohen, commonlyknown as the Shakh, who denes apikorusas Rashi did in his commentary on the almudamin who is ervent in idolatrous acts and wrote the Sefer Torah or the sake o idolatry. SeeRambam,Mishneh Torah,Hilkhot ellin, Mezuzah vSeer orah, 1:13;Shulkhan Aruch, YorehDeah, 281:1. None o the halakhic literature speaks explicitly o burning a siddur, but throughan a fortioriargument (kal vchomer), one can assume that i the law applies to a orah scroll,it would apply to a siddur,as well.85A Declaration about Dr. Kaplans Siddur, 8.86Gordis responded directly to Kaplans haggadah in his 1942 speech to the RA on Authorityin Jewish law. He spoke about the greater problems o authority and denition in Conservative

Judaism and why Kaplan could so dramatically aect the movement. Robert Gordis, Authorityin Jewish Law, Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly(1942): 6497.87Personal interview with Gillman, 14 February 2005.88Louis Finkelstein, Te Jew in 1950, Conservative Judaism 6, no. 4 (May, 1950): 1.89Rabbinical Assembly, Proceedings(1942): 48.90Morris Adler, Te Seminary as Interpreter o Judaism to Modern Jews, delivered at the

Conerence on the Role o Judaism in the Modern World, Congress Hotel, Chicago (19 April1942), 91, Te Ratner Center Archives o Te Library o JS, New York.91Lyman Bryson, Louis Finkelstein, and Robert M. MacIver, eds.,Approaches to National Unity;

A Symposium (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1945), v.


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92Ibid., xiii.93Marshall Sklare, Te Conservative Movement: Achievements and Problems in e JewishCommunity in America, ed. Marshall Sklare (New York: Behrman House, 1974), 179.94Louis Bernstein, Challenge and Mission: e Emergence of the English-speaking OrthodoxRabbinate(New York: Shengold, 1982), 7.95

Jonathan Sarna,American Judaism (New Haven, C: Yale University Press, 2004), 283.96Yoni Lipschitz, Recollections and Reconsideration: Revisiting the Path o Rabbi NormanLamm, e Commentator (17 December 2007), http://www.yucommentator.com/2.2828/recollections-and-reconsideration-revisiting-the-path-o-rabbi-norman-lamm-1.297600(accessed 26 April 2010).97For a comprehensive look at Americas attempts to ortiy the center during this era, see

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., e Vital Center: e Politics of Freedom (Boston: Houghton MifinCompany, 1949).

the excommunication of mordecai kaplan

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