Mordecai Kaplan's Approach to Jewish Mysticism

The Journal ofJewish Thought and Philosophy, Vol. 4, pp. 39-54 © 1994 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by licence only Mordecai Kaplan's Approach to Jewish Mysticism S, Daniel Breslauer University of Kansas) USA Mordecai Kaplan's Naturalism A common critique of Mordecai Kaplan's naturalistic theology complains that it ignores the transcendent dimension of human life. Kaplan advocates a humanistic Judaism free from the supernaturalism that animates traditional Jewish thought. This new, reconstructed, Judaism accords with the world view of contemporary science and enables its believers to actualize their full human potential. Kaplan's critics argue that such a reconstruction of Jewish religion distorts the historical reality of Judaism. David Hartman's recent analysis of Kaplan's thought echoes this criticism. Hartman recognizes the many valuable aspects of Kaplan's philosophy of Judaism but concludes that his approach locks the divine and human "into the same anthropocentric framework" and fails to do justice to the fullness of religious experience. Hartman contrasts Kaplan's humanistic naturalism to the theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose advocacy of the sense of the ineffable looks beyond human experience. He also notes the claims of Heschel's predecessor in the phenomenology of Religion, Rudolf Otto, whose intuition of the idea of the holy recognizes the awe and mystery associated with religious experience. Both a study of religion in general and of Judaism in particular discloses the affective and suprarational aspects that inform human spirituality. The evidence these theorists provide sug- gests that too rigorous a rationalism overlooks the depth dimension of human religiousness.! Kaplan's functional approach to religion and theology apparently ignores an important aspect of human existence - the 1 See David Hartman, "Kaplan's Critique of Halakhah," in his Conflicting Visions: Spiritual Possibilities oj Modern Israel (New York: Schocken, 1990), pp. 192-194. 39 40 5: Daniel Bres/auer yearning for transcendence that motivates the religious quest. Hartman concludes that Kaplan's approach to Judaism suffers on two counts. In the first place his absolute rationalism leads him to overempha- size traditional Judaism's reliance on supernaturalism. In several of his own writings, for example, Hartman emphasizes the dialectic between human creativity and divine authority. Here he characterizes Kaplan's presentation of the contradiction between the authority of divine revelation and the autonomy demanded by human reason as "incomplete and misleading." He claims that "Kaplan weakened the dynamic tension underlying Judaism" by making too sharp a distinction between the roles of the divine and the human in the creation of Jewish religion.2 Secondly, as intimated above, Kaplan fails as a phenomenologist of religion and ignores the affective dimension of Jewish religion. His exposition of Jewish teachings stresses the rational, the lucid, and the self-evident. As such these teachings obscure Judaism's recognition of its own limitations. Jewish religion retains a sense of ultimate mystery, of the boundary beyond which human knowl- edge cannot cross. Kaplan's reconstruction of Judaism fails because it ren- ders the entire meaning of Jewish religion in rationalistic, explanatory, and mundane terms. His functionalism prevents him from intimating the ultimate mystery.3 These two criticisms misunderstand Kaplan's approach to Judaism gen- erally and his appreciation of the affective dimension of Jewish religion in particular. Kaplan approaches Jewish religion neither as an absolute ratio- nalist nor as a phenomenologist, but as a Utilitarian. He criticizes traditional Judaism not merely because it relies on supernaturalism, but rather because it cannot function effectively in the modern world. He deempha- sizes the affective aspects of Jewish religion not because he rejects them but because emotional commitment cannot be commanded, it evolves as a by-product, indirectly stimulated through the persuasiveness of a tradition. On this account, Jewish mysticism, while perhaps based on an inaccurate view of reality, may serve a useful purpose by leading, indirectly, to socially beneficial consequences. Rationalism, on the other hand, may, despite its correct intuitions of reality, be socially harmful through the consequences of its teachings. Kaplan accepts this view and, therefore, consistently affirms the superiority of the medieval Jewish mystical tradition, the Kabbalah, to the teachings of medieval Jewish philosophers. He notes that the philosophers won little acceptance from the Jewish people in contrast to the mystics who commanded a popular following. He comments that "Unlike philosophy, whose study tended to alienate Jews of a reflective 2 Ibid, p. 202. J Ibid, p. 206..

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