"I doubt any critic could be more alive to these faults than the author himself, who apologizes for the forbidding length his book has attained."

i love and feel mordechai kaplan so much lol

the rest of the paragraph is so relatable too

(from "The Future of the American Jew")

"...our Jewish educational institutions...whatever else they do, they should at least not spread the feeling that Jewish knowledge has no relevance to present-day needs."

one of those moments where i wish kaplan would just embrace socialism!

"...the ability to negotiate the transition from the theurgic is to the rational conception of religion is but a phase of the large problem of spiritual readjustment...man must come to terms with life and justify his spiritual striving..."

"Intelligence does not preclude either intuition or mysticism, but intuition should not be confused with supernatural revaluation, nor mysticism with intellectual surrender."

i am thinking constantly of the Russian Doll quote about how "mysticism is the belief that there is wisdom inaccessible to the intellect"

not non-existant, not superempirical, but rather inaccessible

that we do not always have the tools or time on this mortal knowledge to access intellectually knowledge we may have some useful inkling of instinctually

THIS is the kaplan i love

"G-d is not an identifiable being who stands outside the universe. G-d is the life of the universe, immanent insofar as each part acts upon every other, and transcendent insofar as the whole acts upon each part."

i also adore his scathing burn of anti-religionists here

in his critique of jewish secularists, kaplan makes the point im most interested in:

that there is no movement or society, and rarely even an individual (unless they are wholly antisocial) that is not religious. whether through nationalism, political identity, etc. it's present.

topics for the new chapter: "Patriotism merely the modern form of folk religion. Christianity an imperialistic patriotism."

YEAH KAPLAN LET'S GO