← Towards a Spiritual Humanistic Judaism
1. Mel Scult, ed., The Religious Humanism of Mordecai Kaplan: An Anthology (Mosaic Press and the Mordecai M. Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood, 2026), advance text supplied to the author. See also https://kaplancenter.org/the-religious-humanism-of-mordecai-kaplan-an-anthology/. ISBN 9781771619448.
2. Sherwin T. Wine, Judaism Beyond God (Farmington Hills, MI: Society for Humanistic Judaism, 1985).
3. Kenneth Shuster, “In Favor of a Religious Humanistic Judaism,” Religious Humanism 40, no. 2 (2009): 59–71.
4. Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, “Seventy Years after ‘Judaism as a Civilization’: Mordecai Kaplan’s Theology and the Reconstructionist Movement,” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, and Society, n.s., 12, no. 2 (Winter 2006): 127–42. Her argument is paraphrased throughout rather than quoted.
5. Maria Pulzetti, “The Sacred Obligations of Liberal Jews: Claiming the Word ‘Religious,’ ” Evolve, October 6, 2025, https://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/the-sacred-obligations-of-liberal-jews-claiming-the-word-religious/.
6. Joshua Boettiger, “I’m Religious, Not Spiritual: The Nuances of Obligation,” Evolve, May 2, 2025, https://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/im-religious-not-spiritual-the-nuances-of-obligation/.
7. Deborah Waxman et al., “ ‘Covenantal Community’ and Classical Reconstructionism,” Evolve, April 4, 2025, https://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/covenantal-community-and-classical-reconstructionism-talmud/.
8. Harold M. Schulweis, “From God to Godliness: A Proposal for Predicate Theology,” The Reconstructionist, February 1975, reproduced by Evolve, October 16, 2017, https://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/predicate-theology/.
9. Harold M. Schulweis, Evil and the Morality of God (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1984), chap. 5, 77–114.
10. The stronger form of this claim — that a sanctum acts back upon the community which consecrates it, as sentient participant, material organiser, relational mediator, participant in construction and constraining inheritance — is argued by the author in a separate study and is not defended here. This thesis relies only on the weaker claim that non-human parties can stand within the relations in which holiness is enacted.
11. Deborah Glanzberg-Krainin, “Judaism as a Generation: Kaplan, Levi-Strauss, and Why I Believe in the Jewish Future,” Evolve, March 2, 2022, https://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/judaism-as-a-generation-kaplan-levi-strauss-and-why-i-believe-in-the-jewish-future/.
12. Benjamin Weiner, “Davenning: Finding Meaning in Jewish Prayer,” Evolve, October 29, 2018, https://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/davvening-meaning/.
13. David A. Teutsch, “Values-Based Decision Making,” The Reconstructionist, Spring 2001, 22–28, https://www.reconstructingjudaism.org/files/resources/document/vbdm_reconstruction; see also Teutsch, A Guide to Jewish Practice, vol. 1, Everyday Living (Wyncote, PA: Reconstructionist Rabbinical College Press, 2011).
14. Scult, Religious Humanism of Mordecai Kaplan, foreword and editorial arrangement.
15. Scult, Religious Humanism of Mordecai Kaplan, chap. 4. Page references in the advance text include 76 and 92; these should be reconciled with the published edition.
16. Mordecai M. Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization: Toward a Reconstruction of American-Jewish Life (1934; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2010), especially the discussions of folkways, the Sabbath and reconstruction.
17. Reconstructing Judaism, “About Reconstructionist Judaism,” accessed September 3, 2026, https://rrc.edu/reconstructionist-judaism/.
18. Dennis Sasso, “On Rabbinical Leadership,” Beit Kaplan: The Rabbinic Partnership for Jewish Peoplehood, accessed September 22, 2026, https://www.beitkaplan.org/on-rabbinical-leadership.
19. Mordecai M. Kaplan, Questions Jews Ask: Reconstructionist Answers (New York: Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1956), 158; quoted and discussed in Scult, Religious Humanism of Mordecai Kaplan, chap. 6.
20. Baḥya ben Joseph ibn Paquda, The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, trans. Menahem Mansoor with Sara Arenson and Shoshana Dannhauser (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), introduction and “Gate of Reflection.”
21. Scult, Religious Humanism of Mordecai Kaplan, chap. 3.
22. Menaḥem Mendel Lefin of Satanov, Sefer Ḥeshbon ha-Nefesh (Lemberg: Rubinstein, 1808).
23. Mishnah Berachot 4:4.
24. Scult, Religious Humanism of Mordecai Kaplan, 76, advance text.
25. Mordecai M. Kaplan and Eugene Kohn, eds., Sabbath Prayer Book (New York: Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945).
26. Martin Hasan Di Maggio, Tefilotenu: Prayerbook of Spiritual Humanistic Judaism (self-published, Amazon KDP, 2026).
27. Mordecai M. Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood, “Herem Text,” accessed September 3, 2026, https://kaplancenter.org/herem-text/.