One of the challenges often heard about Jewish Peoplehood is that it’s difficult to understand, difficult to grasp and difficult to express. And yet, Peoplehood is most concretely manifest as the enterprise of the building and on-going development of Jewish civilization. This idea was captured and articulated in Mordecai Kaplan’s magnum opus, Judaism as a Civilization (Kaplan, 1934), which will provide the basis for this introduction and discussion. Kaplan challenged the notion of Judaism as strictly a religion. He claimed that what sets the Jews apart from the rest of society “consists of certain social relationships to maintain, cultural interests to foster, activities to engage in, organizations to belong to, amenities to conform to, moral and social standards to live up to as a Jew” (Kaplan, 1934, p.178).

 

All of these constitute the uniqueness of the Jews: “Judaism as otherness is thus something far more comprehensive than Jewish religion. It includes that nexus of a history, literature, language, social organizations, folk sanctions, standards of conduct, social and spiritual ideals, esthetics values, which in their totality form a civilization” (p.178).

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Mordechai Kaplan in his book Judaism as a Civilization states that Judaism is: “something far more comprehensive than Jewish religion. It includes that nexus of a history, literature, language, social organizations, folk sanctions, standards of conduct, social and spiritual ideals, esthetics values, which in their totality form a civilization” (p.178).

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The idea of Judaism as a civilization captures the magnitude of Jewish Peoplehood. Each Jew, Jewish organization and community receives the wealth of Jewish civilization and is responsible for sustaining it.  Each also brings their unique local perspective thereby interpreting Jewish civilization, giving it life, relevance and meaning for the contemporary Jewish People.