Mordecai M. Kaplan and the Development of Reconstructionism
Author: | Libowitz, Richard |
Year: | 1983 |
Pages: | 266 |
ISBN: | 0-88946-651-3 978-0-88946-651-7 |
Price: | $199.95 |
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Deals with the unpublished papers and the ignored early period of Kaplan's life, before he published Judaism as a Civilization (1934) at the age of 53.
Reviews
". . . breaks new ground in that it is based heavily on unpublished sources and deals only with the early period. . . . Among [these sources] are some 10,000 letters which Libowitz has arranged and catalogued. . . . Libowitz's book is helpful in many ways and should be read by anyone who is interested in Kaplan." - Reconstructionist
"The first work on the development of Kaplan's thought which draws on Kaplan's voluminous diaries and papers, access to which has been restricted. . . . Libowitz's presentation is clear . . . [and] includes a fine set of pictures of Kaplan, his family, and his associates." - Religious Studies Review
"The merit of Libowitz's book is that it confirms through extensive quotation from Kaplan's twenty-five volumes of diaries (to which no scholar before Libowitz has had access) what the reader of Kaplan's works has long suspected [i.e., his perpetual aloneness and his single-mindedness in pursuing a solution to the Jewish problem of his day as he perceived it]." - Studies in Contemporary Jewry