The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion

Front Cover
Wayne State University Press, 1994 - History - 381 pages

Kaplan takes the major formulation of his theological approach, "God as the power that makes for salvation," and demonstrates how it can be used to invigorate the Jewish religion in a changing world.

In this book, Kaplan enlarges on his notion of functional reinterpretation and then actually applies it to the entire ritual cycle of the Jewish year-a rarity in modern Jewish thought. This work continues to function as a central text for the Reconstructionist movement, whose influence continues to grow in American Jewry.

 

Contents

CHAPTER
1
ish religion in a changing world p 1 2
9
tion p 14 4 The synthesis of incompatible
20
the modern point of view p 25 6 God
34
GOD AS THE POWER THat Makes for Salva
40
CHAPTER PAGE
104
GOD AS THE POWER THAT MAKES FOR
149
GOD IN NATURE AND IN HISTORY
188
GOD FELT AS A PRESENCE
243
GOD AS THE POWER THAT MAKES
265
The meaning of freedom p 268 2
293
The association of religion with the moral
299
law p 299 2 The Jewish contribution to
306
divine sanction p 311 5 Righteousness to
320
CHAPTER PAGE
330
ization after another p 334 3 How Judaism
347

ERATION
202
The sacredness of human rights p 212
212
The meaning of equality p 215 4
218
The dispensing of happiness as the norm of
225
civilization p 347 4 The reconstruction
355
INDEX
369
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About the author (1994)

Kaplan emigrated to the United States from Lithuania at the age of 8. After graduating from Columbia University in 1902, he was ordained a Conservative rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he taught for the next 50 years. His attempts to adapt Judaism to the modern world, particularly to the American situation, led to the establishment of a new movement, Reconstructionism. He saw Judaism as representing, first and foremost, a religious civilization and proposed a Jewish theology shaped by Jewish experience and Jewish ethics.

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