What is Reconstructionist Judaism?
Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, who founded the Reconstructionist school of thought,
made a profound and indelible mark on the American Jewish community. He sought to
make Judaism more alive, more relevant, more permeating, more understood, and more
'lived,' and offered as a solution to the ' synagogue community center,' an all-encompassing
Jewish-life venue which RCBE is rapidly and proudly becoming. The synagogue center
-- and all that it represents, implies, calls for, and offers -- is to be a focal
point of our 'Jewish lives,' permeate into our 'secular lives,and ultimately transcend
certain perceived divides between them. Aiming to balance the demands, luxuries,
and benefits of living in a secular society with the beauties, obligations, and inspirations
of living fully Jewish lives, Kaplan offered a contemporary, reconstructionist understanding
of Judaism as the 'evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people.' This philosophy
infers the continued subtle reshaping of our people's faith and traditions in our
own day, a practice which has characterized the Jewish People over the many centuries
of its existence; an understanding of the sovereignty of God as an acknowledgment
of the paramount importance of social righteousness, of our accountability for our
actions, of a higher law and authority than one's own arbitrary will, of our own
first-hand experience of that larger life -- which is God. We embrace this most demanding
-- and rewarding -- reconstructionist approach to living Jewish life, which Kaplan
summarized as "...not intended to abet laxity in ritual observance or indifference
to religion [but rather] definitely intended to motivate in Jews a maximum and not
a minimum identification with Jewish life."
Click Here To Visit The Jewish Reconstructionist Federation’s Web Site
