Mordecai Kaplan Quotes
Mordecai Kaplan was a Lithuanian-born American Jewish philosopher and rabbi, long associated with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, a fourth American Jewish denomination that he conceived as a renewal of Judaism for the conditions of modern democratic and pluralist America. Judaism as a Civilization defined Judaism as the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people, and so as something constituted by the people's ongoing creative life rather than by any fixed metaphysical claim. The quotes below are attributed to Mordecai Kaplan, organized by topic.
Mordecai Kaplan on God
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Attributed to Mordecai Kaplan:
“Judaism is the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people.”
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Attributed to Mordecai Kaplan:
“God is the power that makes for salvation in the lives of human beings; God is real because the salvation is real.”
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Attributed to Mordecai Kaplan:
“Tradition has a vote, but it does not have a veto.”
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Attributed to Mordecai Kaplan:
“The Jewish people creates Judaism continuously; we are no museum of revealed truths.”
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Attributed to Mordecai Kaplan:
“Religion in America must be voluntary, or it ceases to be religion at all.”