Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century - Biography of Mordecai M. Kaplan (Hardcover)

Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century is the first critical examination of the early life of Mordecai Kaplan - the sources of his inspiration, the evolution of his thought as a religious ideologue, and his inner struggles. Kaplan is perhaps the most important Jewish thinker to appear on the American scene in the last one hundred years. In many ways, his life embodies the American Jewish experience of the first half of the twentieth century. He died in 1983 at the age of 102, having lived through the whole saga of the American Jew in our times. Arriving in the United States as a boy, growing up in New York City, becoming thoroughly Americanized, he struggled to find ways of making Judaism compatible with the American experience and the modern temper. His quest for a dynamic Judaism was fueled by the fear that the freedom of the new world would destroy Jewish civilization. His radical reconstruction of Jewish life created intense controversy, alienating him from traditionally committed Jews and colleagues. Undaunted, Kaplan devoted his life to training rabbis and teachers, enabling them to face the ultimate religious questions in contemporary terms. With the founding of The Jewish Center and the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, he established the prototypes for the modern expanded synagogue. He was also the principal visionary of the Zionist movement in America. Though supremely confident in his message, Kaplan's profound doubts regarding his own abilities plagued him from the beginning of his public career. Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century returns to the freshness of Kaplan's earliest formulations and concludes with the publication of Judaism as a Civilization in 1934. Based on amass of unpublished letters, sermons, and a twenty-seven volume journal, this richly textured biography reappraises Kaplan's significance and offers an original and intimate look at the man, his mind, and his work.