Word: reconstructionists
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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DIED. Mordecai Kaplan, 102, founder of the Jewish Reconstructionist movement, which sees Judaism as an evolving civilization and not just as a religion; in New York City. A professor at Manhattan's Jewish Theological Seminary (1909-63), Kaplan was Orthodox by upbringing, but came to believe that Judaism is a synthesis of religion, race and culture. The practical effect of this view was to see the synagogue as a center for Jewish communal life that stressed the humanistic rather than the solely religious aspects of heritage. Kaplan's ideas were viewed as a divisive force by many Orthodox...
...Conservatives, however, still lag behind Judaism's Reform wing, which began ordaining women in 1972, and the tiny, liberal Reconstructionist movement, which first accepted women rabbis in 1974. Today there are 73 female rabbis in the U.S. and Canada, and a number of them, in fact, are serving in Conservative synagogues. Although the 1,200-member Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Conservative rabbis, has favored the ordination of women for years, it left the final decision to J.T.S., the intellectual center of the 100-year-old Conservative movement. In 1979 the seminary's faculty put off making...
...Advocacy of a literacy test for voters. Interviewed by the magazine Reconstructionist, McManus said "we don't feel just anyone should be allowed to vote...