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Reconstructing Halakha
Many Reconstructionists and other liberal Jews seem afraid of the term halakha, reacting as if it invokes some dark presence coming out of the past to crush them with its oppressive weight. They would be surprised to learn that Mordecai Kaplan wrote that “Jewish life [is] meaningless without Jewish law.” He made this statement not as the young rabbi of an Orthodox congregation, but relatively late in his career, in one of his most thorough and systematic examinations of Jewish life in America, The Future of the American Jew (1948).
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/reconstructing-halakha
Posted on: 2016/05/06 - 11:01am
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Can a Reconstructionist Sin?
Some years ago, at an informal lunch shared by a number of us who worked for the same Jewish agency, a staffer indicated she had no need to attend Yom Kippur services. Predictably provoked, we asked why. Yom Kippur was all about sin, she replied, and since she never sinned, she had nothing for which to atone.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/can-reconstructionist-sin
Posted on: 2016/05/06 - 11:06am
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How to Build Just and Holy Congregations
Although to every individual the achievement of personal salvation is his supreme quest and responsibility, it is unattainable without devotion to the task of social salvation.–Mordecai M. Kaplan, The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/how-build-just-and-holy-congregations
Posted on: 2016/05/12 - 1:34pm
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"Straight-Welcoming?!" – Creating an Inclusive Community
Jewish communities of all stripes are grappling with the challenge of creating more inclusive communities. In particular, there is an unprecedented focus on welcoming LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) Jews. At Congregation Bet Haverim (CBH) in Atlanta, our commitment to inclusivity emerged organically. Founded by gay and lesbian Jews, we became straight-welcoming; today, straight members constitute the majority. We had to decide whether our values were queer specific or queer universal.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/straight-welcoming-creating-inclusive-community
Posted on: 2016/05/13 - 11:25am
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A Zionism Worth Reconstructing
The attachment of younger North American Jews to Israel is not what it used to be.
As recently as 30 years ago, the State of Israel was central to Jewish identity in North America. After the Holocaust, Jews took pride in Israelis’ self-defense. Israel was viewed as a shining example of the dogged commitment to democracy and human rights in the face of the unremitting hostility of its neighbors. It held the promise of Jewish revival in a new, modern idiom. Visits to the Land had the emotional intensity of pilgrimages, of returning home after two millennia.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/zionism-worth-reconstructing
Posted on: 2016/05/13 - 11:37am
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Reconstructionism, Chosenness, and the Abrahamic Dialogue
The first time I encountered the idea that Jews were a “chosen people,” I learned that this was a mistaken and even pernicious belief that was held by other Jews. The rejection of chosenness made sense to me then as a 12 year old preparing for her bat mitzvah in a Reconstructionist congregation. It has continued to make sense to me over the years, for all the reasons that Rabbi Deborah Waxman so eloquently lays out in her article, “Rejecting Chosenness in Favor of Distinctiveness.”
Posted on: 2016/05/13 - 11:44am
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Rejecting Chosenness in Favor of Distinctiveness
In what sense and to what extent do Jews still believe ourselves to be “chosen”?
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/rejecting-chosenness-favor-distinctiveness
Posted on: 2016/05/13 - 11:48am
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Building an Ark: On the Search for an Authentic Jewish Relationship to the Arts
I’m a workin’ on a building
I’m a workin’ on a building
I’m a workin’ on a building
For my Lord, for my LordTraditional
Posted on: 2016/05/13 - 12:10pm
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Judaism as a Generation
Readers of Mordecai Kaplan, and those familiar with Reconstructionist thinking, will recognize the playfulness of this essay’s title. Kaplan’s pioneering work, Judaism as a Civilization, challenged American Jews to think creatively and courageously about Jewish life; he wrote about a people bound together not just by shared ritual observance, but by music, art, intellectual engagement, and a joyful sense of purpose. Kaplan’s central argument was that Jewish civilization has never been static, but has always been dynamic.
Posted on: 2016/05/13 - 12:26pm
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Building a Personal Relationship with a Nonpersonal God
They envisioned you in an abundance of metaphors.
You are one in all of those images.
–Shir Hakavod (12th-century Germany)1https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/building-personal-relationship-nonpersonal-god
Posted on: 2016/05/13 - 12:43pm
