A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community

Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist movement, was the most influential and controversial radical Jewish thinker in the twentieth century. This book examines the intellectual influences that moved Kaplan from Orthodoxy and analyzes the combination of personal, strategic, and career reasons that kept Kaplan close to Orthodox Jews, posing a question crucial to the understanding of any religion: Can an established religious group learn from a heretic who has rejected its most fundamental beliefs?

• Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century: A Biography of Mordecai M. Kaplan (American Jewish Civilization Series)
• Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (Jewish Encounters Series)
• Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law (Library of Jewish Ideas)
• Modern Orthodox Judaism: A Documentary History (JPS Anthologies of Jewish Thought)
• Hasidism: A New History
• Leaves of Faith: The World of Jewish Learning
• Who Will Lead Us?: The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America
• Faith Shattered and Restored: Judaism in the Postmodern Age (Maggid Modern Classics)
• The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel