Communings of the Spirit : The Journals of Mordecai M.Kaplan, Volume. 1; 1913-1934

ISBN-13: 9780814325759 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 672 str.

Mel Scult; Mordecai Menahem Kaplan

Opis

Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983), founder of Reconstructionism, was a pre-eminent American Jewish thinker and rabbi. His life embodies the American Jewish experience of the first half of the 20th century. With passionate intensity and uncommon candour, Kaplan compulsively recorded his experience in his journal (some 10,000 pages). He confided his personal involvements with prominent Jewish leaders such as Chaim Weizmann, Solomon Schechter and Louis Brandeis, and his impressions of key Jewish historical moments such as the founding of the Hebrew University in 1925. We see him wrestling with his concept of God and the problem of evil. In his journal he railed against the pettiness of his congregants and the difficulties of institutional life. But above all he was obsessed by the need to modernize Judaism's traditional religious categories in order to save the Jewish people. His ideal was a functional Judaism that would flourish in an American democratic society.