Mordecai M. Kaplan
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Mordecai M. Kaplan
Mordecai Menahem Kaplan (born Mottel Kaplan; June 11, 1881 – November 8, 1983), was a Lithuanian-born American rabbi, writer, Jewish educator, professor, theologian, philosopher, activist, and religious leader who founded the Reconstructionist branch of Judaism along with his son-in-law Ira Eisenstein. He has been described as a "towering figure" in the recent history of Judaism for his influential work in adapting it to modern society, contending that Judaism should be a unifying and creative force by stressing the cultural and historical character of the religion as well as theological doctrine. Life and work Mordecai Menahem Kaplan was born Mottel Kaplan in Sventiany in the Russian Empire (present-day Švenčionys in Lithuania) on June 11, 1881, the son of Haya (née Anna) and Rabbi Israel Kaplan. His father, ordained by the leading Lithuanian Jewish luminaries, went to serve as a dayan in the court of Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph in New York City in 1888. Mordecai was ...
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Jewish Theological Seminary Of America
The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) is a Conservative Jewish education organization in New York City, New York. It is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism and a major center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies. The Jewish Theological Seminary Library is one of the most significant collections of Judaica in the world. In addition to a number of research and training institutes, JTS operates five schools: * Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies (affiliated with Columbia University; offers joint/double bachelor's degree programs with both Columbia and Barnard College) * Gershon Kekst Graduate School * William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education * H. L. Miller Cantorial School and College of Jewish Music * The Rabbinical School History Possible antecedents: Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau Rabbi Zecharias Frankel (1801–1875) was a leading figure in mid-19th Century German Jewry. Known both for his traditionalist views and ...
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Professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors are usually experts in their field and teachers of the highest rank. In most systems of academic ranks, "professor" as an unqualified title refers only to the most senior academic position, sometimes informally known as "full professor". In some countries and institutions, the word "professor" is also used in titles of lower ranks such as associate professor and assistant professor; this is particularly the case in the United States, where the unqualified word is also used colloquially to refer to associate and assistant professors as well. This usage would be considered incorrect among other academic communities. However, the otherwise unqualified title "Professor" designated with a capital letter nearly always refers to a full professo ...
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Henry Sidgwick
Henry Sidgwick (; 31 May 1838 – 28 August 1900) was an English utilitarian In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charac ... philosopher and economist. He was the Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy, Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1883 until his death, and is best known in philosophy for his utilitarian treatise ''The Methods of Ethics''. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research and a member of the Metaphysical Society and promoted the higher education of women. His work in economics has also had a lasting influence. In 1875, with Millicent Garrett Fawcett, he co-founded Newnham College, a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It was the second Cambridge college ...
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Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence. It is a member of the Ivy League. Columbia is ranked among the top universities in the world. Columbia was established by royal charter under George II of Great Britain. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolution, and in 1787 was placed under a private board of trustees headed by former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In 1896, the campus was moved to its current location in Morningside Heights and renamed Columbia University. Columbia scientists and scholars have ...
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City College Of New York
The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, City College was the first free public institution of higher education in the United States. It is the oldest of CUNY's 25 institutions of higher learning, and is considered its flagship college. Located in Hamilton Heights overlooking Harlem in Manhattan, City College's 35-acre (14 ha) Collegiate Gothic campus spans Convent Avenue from 130th to 141st Streets. It was initially designed by renowned architect George B. Post, and many of its buildings have achieved landmark status. The college has graduated ten Nobel Prize winners, one Fields Medalist, one Turing Award winner, three Pulitzer Prize winners, and three Rhodes Scholars. Among these alumni, the latest is a Bronx native, John O'Keefe (2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine). City Colleg ...
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Modern Orthodox
Modern may refer to: History *Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Philosophy and sociology * Modernity, a loosely defined concept delineating a number of societal, economic and ideological features that contrast with "pre-modern" times or societies ** Late modernity Art * Modernism ** Modernist poetry * Modern art, a form of art * Modern dance, a dance form developed in the early 20th century * Modern architecture, a broad movement and period in architectural history * Modern music (other) Geography *Modra, a Slovak city, referred to in the German language as "Modern" Typography * Modern (typeface), a raster font packaged with Windows XP * Another name for the typeface classification known as Didone (typography) * Modern, a generic font family name for fixed-pitch serif and sans serif fonts (for exam ...
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Arnold Ehrlich
Arnold Bogumil Ehrlich (15 January 1848 in Volodovka, Brest-Litovsk – November 1919 in New Rochelle, New York) was a scholar of bible and rabbinics whose work spanned the latter part of the 19th and the early 20th century. A formidable scholar, he is said to have possessed perfect recall, with an outstanding knowledge of Bible and Talmud, and to have spoken 39 languages. He is best known for his book ''Mikra Kiphshuto'' (''The Bible according to its Literal Meaning'') in three Hebrew volumes published from 1899–1901, in which he sought to bring the results of modern textual criticism of the Bible to a wider Hebrew audience, emphasising the Torah to be a document made by humans complete with scribal and copying errors, not a perfect work dictated to Moses at Sinai; and as a formative intellectual influence on the young Mordecai Kaplan. Ehrlich earned a living as a private tutor, and teaching at the Hebrew Preparatory School of the Temple Emanu-El Theological School ...
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Jacob Joseph
Jacob Joseph ( he, יעקב יוסף 1840 –July 28, 1902) served as chief rabbi of New York City's Association of American Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, a federation of Eastern European Jewish synagogues. Born in Krozhe, a province of Kovno, he studied in the Nevyozer Kloiz under Rabbi Yisrael Salanter and in the Volozhin yeshiva under the '' Netziv.'' In Volozhin, he was known as "Rav Yaakov Charif" (Rabbi Jacob Sharp) because of his sharp mind. He became successively rabbi of Vilon in 1868, Yurburg in 1870, Zhagory and then Kovno. His fame as a preacher spread, so that in 1883 the community of Vilna selected him as its maggid. RJJ, the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School is named after him, and a playground is named after and honors the memory of a great-grandson of Rabbi Jacob Joseph who carried his name. Chief rabbi Some in the Jewish community of New York wanted to be united under a common religious authority, and although the Reform and liberal factions ridiculed the idea, ...
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Dayan (rabbinic Judge)
A beit din ( he, בית דין, Bet Din, house of judgment, , Ashkenazic: ''beis din'', plural: batei din) is a rabbinical court of Judaism. In ancient times, it was the building block of the legal system in the Biblical Land of Israel. Today, it is invested with legal powers in a number of religious matters (''din Torah'', "matter of litigation", plural ''dinei Torah'') both in Israel and in Jewish communities in the Diaspora, where its judgments hold varying degrees of authority (depending upon the jurisdiction and subject matter) in matters specifically related to Jewish religious life. History Rabbinical commentators point out that the first suggestion in the Torah that the ruler divest his legal powers and delegate his power of judgment to lower courts was made by Jethro to Moses (Exodus ). This situation was formalised later when God gave the explicit command to "establish judges and officers in your gates" (Deuteronomy ). There were three types of courts (Mishnah, tract ...
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Lithuanian Jews
Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks () are Jews with roots in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, the northeastern Suwałki and Białystok regions of Poland, as well as adjacent areas of modern-day Russia and Ukraine). The term is sometimes used to cover all Haredi Jews who follow a " Lithuanian" (Ashkenazi, non- Hasidic) style of life and learning, whatever their ethnic background. The area where Lithuanian Jews lived is referred to in Yiddish as , hence the Hebrew term (). No other famous Jew is more closely linked to a specifically Lithuanian city than Vilna Gaon (in Yiddish, "the genius of Vilna"). Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (1720–1797) to give his rarely used full name, helped make Vilna (modern-day Vilnius) a world center for Talmudic learning. Chaim Grade (1910–1982) was born in Vilna, the city about which he would write. The inter-war Republic of Lithuania was home to a large and influential ...
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Ira Eisenstein
Rabbi Ira Eisenstein (November 26, 1906 – June 28, 2001) was an American rabbi who founded Reconstructionist Judaism, along with Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, his teacher and, later, father-in-law through his marriage to Judith Kaplan, over a period of time spanning from the late 1920s to the 1940s. Reconstructionist Judaism formally became a distinct denomination within Judaism with the foundation of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1968, where he was the founding president. Biography A native of Manhattan, New York, Rabbi Eisenstein held a bachelor's degree and a doctoral degree from Columbia University. In 1931, he was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he first met and married Judith Kaplan Eisenstein, daughter of founder Mordecai Kaplan. After his ordination, Rabbi Eisenstein became associate rabbi and then rabbi of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the first Reconstructionist congregation, which Kaplan founded in 1922. He also served as reli ...
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Religious Leader
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the terms used for individual clergy are clergyman, clergywoman, clergyperson, churchman, and cleric, while clerk in holy orders has a long history but is rarely used. In Christianity, the specific names and roles of the clergy vary by denomination and there is a wide range of formal and informal clergy positions, including deacons, elders, priests, bishops, preachers, pastors, presbyters, ministers, and the pope. In Islam, a religious leader is often known formally or informally as an imam, caliph, qadi, mufti, mullah, muezzin, or ayatollah. In the Jewish tradition, a religious leader is often a rabbi (teacher) or hazzan (cantor). Etymology The word ''cleric'' comes from the ecclesiastical Latin ''Clericus'', for those belonging to ...
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