Mordecai Kaplan as Hermeneut: History, Memory, and His God-Idea

Abstract

In an insightful article on Mordecai M. Kaplan and process theology, Jacob Staub, past academic dean of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, rightfully notes that any attempt to extract a single, consistent, 'authentic' essence from all of the various theological formulations byJewish teachers through the ages is a perilous task indeed.' As students ofJewish thought and intellectual history know, not only are there a wide variety ofJewish theological expressions but many, if not most, of these expressions preclude, by their own selfunderstandings, other Jewish theological views. Just to mention one twentieth-century example, Martin Buber's (1878-1965) description of the dialogical encounter between the human being and God is fundamentally opposed to Hermann Cohen's (1842-1918) notion that God is and cannot be anything but an idea that regulates human moral action.2 In the context of Kaplan, and specifically Kaplan's God-idea, Staub takes the diversity ofJewish theological views of God to show that the question to be asked about Kaplan's theology is not whether it is authentically Jewish but whether it provides a meaningful system of Jewish living.3