The American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan (Reappraisals in Jewish Social & Intellectual History) - Hardcover

Goldsmith, Emanuel S.; Etc.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814730248 ISBN 13: 9780814730249

Publisher: New York University Press, 1990

Synopsis

This text offers the first full-length study of Mordecai M. Kaplan since his death in 1983. The most distinctive feature is the broad range of perspectives from which Kaplan is viewed. Although most of the essays are appreciative of Kaplan's significance, they are critical rather than hagiographic. Readers will find here an historical context for the life and works of Mordecai Kaplan. Essays dealing with key issues in Kaplan's career focus on the establishment of the Jewish Center, Kaplan's life at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and his relationship to Israel Friedlaender and Milton Steinberg. Kaplan's Jewish and non-Jewish contemporaries, including John Dewey, Henry Nelson Weiman, Ahad Ha-Am, Martin Buber, and A.J. Heschel, are presented in terms of comparison and influence. Kaplan's metaphysics, his interpretation of the Bible, his views on education, economic justice, and the role of women are given full consideration. This work also includes a complete bibliography of Kaplan's works beginning with his first publication in 1907 and ending with those works published posthumously.

About this title

Review

"This is the most authoritative scholarly introduction so far to the life of John Russwurm, that enigmatic founder of black nationalism, and the most accessible sampling of his works. Professor James has performed a service to the profession."
-Wilson J. Moses, author of "The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925"

"In this clearly written and widely researched biography Winston James has brought back from unwarranted historical obscurity the life and work of the Pan-Africanist, John Brown Russwurm, a pioneer in the struggle for freedom and equality in the US and Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century."
-Richard Blackett, author of "Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860".

"Winston James' sensitive, probing, and absorbing portrait of John Brown Russwurm restores this pivotal but little-known activist to the prominent status he deserves. Editor, educator, abolitionist, colonizationist, Pan-African polemicist--Russwurm assumed all of these roles in a life that stretched from the Caribbean to Canada and America to Africa. James' insightful book shows how he moved from place to place, and cause to cause, with seeming ease. The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm will delight and please both scholars and students of the Black Atlantic for some time to come."
-Richard S. Newman, author of "Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers"/

"The discerning light that James focuses on Russwurm is a significant contribution to the literature of the antislavery movement." -H. Shapiro, "Choice Magazine"

About the Author

EMANUEL S. GOLDSMITH is Associate Professor of Yiddish and Jewish Studies at Queens College, CUNY. MEL SCULT is Professor of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY and author of the forthcoming Mordecai M. Kaplan: Prophet of Renewal, 1881-1934. ROBERT M. SELTZER is Professor of History at Hunter College, Chair of the Hunter Jewish Social Studies Program, and the author of Jewish People, Jewish Thought.

About this edition

• Publisher: New York University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0814730248
• ISBN 13: 9780814730249
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 460