Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983) is the foundation on which Spiritual Humanistic Judaism is built. Almost all of its architecture is inherited from him: Judaism as the evolving religious civilisation of the Jewish people; the sancta; practices understood as folkways; revaluation and reconstruction; religion defined by its function rather than by assent; salvation as this-worldly fulfilment; and the standard that we must mean what we say when we pray.

Judaism as Civilisation

For Kaplan, Judaism is not merely a creed or a set of beliefs — it is the evolving religious civilisation of the Jewish people. Civilisation names the interdependence of Jewish language, peoplehood, institutions, art, food, memory and practice. Religious says that these are organised around questions of sacred value, obligation, ultimate concern, mortality and human fulfilment.

Torah: Authority Without Infallibility

Torah is the Jewish people’s accumulated record of argument about how a life and a society should be ordered. Its authority is that of a multigenerational interlocutor, not an infallible legislator. The governing Reconstructionist formula, which Spiritual Humanistic Judaism holds to as well, is that the past gets a vote, not a veto.

Mitzvot as Religious Folkways

A mitzvah, on this account, is an inherited Jewish pattern for ordering an action, a relationship or a time. Its claim does not depend on the proposition that God issued it, but on what the practice has carried, the community which receives it, the values it embodies, and the person one becomes by repeating it. The question asked of every ritual is double: what dimension of life does this practice disclose, and what quality does its repetition train? Shabbat discloses that human value exceeds production, and trains rest, joy, sufficiency and presence. A berakhah discloses dependence and trains gratitude.

Democratic Covenant and Accountable Authority

A community may voluntarily articulate its values, translate them into norms, adopt practices, establish means of accountability, and provide routes for teshuvah and repair — but a majority cannot vote cruelty, humiliation or falsehood into holiness. Spiritual Humanistic Judaism holds itself to an ethical constitution in this Kaplanian spirit:

• Emet — public teaching and liturgy must say what the community means.
• Tsedek — institutions and distributions are subject to moral scrutiny.
• Ḥesed and gemilut ḥasadim — lovingkindness must take material form.
• Raḥamim — vulnerability and suffering call first for accompaniment.
• Anavah — persons and communities take their rightful space.
• Hakarat ha-tov and simḥah — goodness and joy are noticed, named, shared and protected.
• Shmirat ha-lashon — speech is governed by truth, necessity, dignity and consequence.
• Bal tashḥit — waste and avoidable harm violate the interdependence life rests on.
• Ahavat Yisrael — Jewish peoplehood creates duties of solidarity, continuity, inclusion and morally serious criticism.
• Teshuvah — norms are revisable, harms are acknowledged, repair is expected.

Where Kaplan Stops

Kaplan supplies nearly the whole building… He stops at the noun: God is retained and redefined as the power that makes for salvation.

Spiritual Humanistic Judaism accepts Kaplan’s civilisational account, his religious naturalism, his this-worldly salvation, his democratic authority, and his revaluation of mitzvot as folkways. Its one departure concerns whether the divine noun survives once its supernatural Subject has disappeared — a question taken up on the Harold Schulweis page, and explored further under Our Scholarship.

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