Proto-Reconstructionism in Pittsburgh

Toward the end of the typical detective thriller is a moment where a final clue suddenly reassembles all the disparate pieces of the case into some new revelatory clarity.

I felt something similar after reading a letter that Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan wrote following an engagement at Congregation Beth Shalom in November 1925.

Kaplan was among the most prominent American rabbis at the time. He was on the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary and was becoming known for the swirl of revolutionary and often controversial ideas he was introducing to American Judaism.

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One of his big ideas was the synagogue-center. Kaplan wanted the social and religious aspects of Judaism to coexist within one building with a sanctuary, social hall and recreation facilities. This novel concept soon became nearly ubiquitous in America.

From there, Kaplan founded the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in 1922 to promote his idea of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization capable of harmonizing ancient tradition with the realities of modern life. Among his first innovations was the bat mitzvah of his daughter Judith, a first in American Judaism.

From the starting point of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Reconstructionist movement gradually emerged over the next few decades. It officially arrived in Pittsburgh in the late 1960s, when Congregation Dor Hadash affiliated.

Unofficially, though, aspects arrived here decades earlier.

Kaplan came in November 1925 under the auspices of the Bureau of Jewish Education of Pittsburgh. The Bureau had been founded in December 1921 to address a crisis in religious education. Only 60% of the Jewish children in Pittsburgh were receiving some form of religious education. By one count, this was the highest rate of any major Jewish community in America, and yet it also meant that thousands of Jewish children were unaffiliated. In a public call for support, a coalition of 12 rabbis and lay leaders representing all corners of the local Jewish community wrote, “Thousands of our boys and girls are absolutely ignorant of Jewish history and the religion of their fathers.”

The Bureau of Jewish Education attempted to reach these unaffiliated through large communal holiday programs. It started with a Passover party spread across locations in three city neighborhoods. It drew some 5,000 children together on one night.

Despite this early success, the Bureau of Jewish Education never gained momentum. It was perpetually falling dormant and reconstituting itself. After a period of modest activity, it was reorganized in April 1925 under president Clara Fechheimer.

This new cohort launched a speaker’s series, starting with Kaplan. How did the bureau secure an engagement with one of the most notable rabbis in the country?

One reason was that the three leading Conservative rabbis in Pittsburgh were all former students of Kaplan at Jewish Theological Seminary: Rabbi Benjamin Lichter, who started at B’nai Israel in 1920; Rabbi Herman Hailperin, who started at Tree of Life in 1922; and Rabbi Goodman A. Rose, who started at Beth Shalom in 1924.

Another reason was that Kaplan misunderstood the invitation.

Coverage of Kaplan’s talk at Beth Shalom is scarce, saying only that he had “urged the organization of a chapter of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism for the purpose of helping to make modern Judaism more rational, national and ethical.” In one of those infuriating vagaries that fill historic newspapers, the article continued, “Interesting questions and discussions followed the main address of Dr. Kaplan.”

Writing to Fechheimer a few days later, in a letter now kept in the Bureau of Jewish Education records at the Rodef Shalom Archives, Kaplan wrote, “I came to Pittsburgh at the suggestion of Rabbi Rose, from whom I gathered the impression that there was a possibility of organizing a chapter of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. If I had known that I was simply to give an address, I would not have stopped off in Pittsburgh that day, because I had a great deal to attend to in the city. I feel that there is altogether too much talking done, and too little action taken upon the talking.”

By the time Kaplan spoke in Pittsburgh in late 1925, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism had expanded to include chapters across the East Coast and into the Midwest. Kaplan’s former students had started branches in Brooklyn, Cleveland, Chicago, Hartford, Manhattan Beach, New Bedford and Scranton, according to Mel Scult’s 1993 biography “Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century.” You can see how Kaplan assumed that former students were planning something similar for Pittsburgh.

Rose’s correspondence to Kaplan hasn’t surfaced. Even so, the invitation illuminates aspects of the development of Squirrel Hill in the early 1920s.

A few years ago, I wrote an article for this publication about the oldest section of the Congregation Beth Shalom synagogue complex. It was built in 1923 and was known as the Community House. It had a gymnasium, a kitchen, classrooms and an auditorium with a balcony that doubled as a sanctuary for prayer. In other words, it resembled the type of “synagogue-center” that Kaplan had been promoting for several years.

Rose joined Beth Shalom in mid-1924, several months after the dedication of the Community House. That fall, he wrote: “We in this section are laying the foundations for a new Jewish community, distinctive, and in certain respects different from those from which we had come. We must organize our Judaism and mould our spiritual structures. What plans have we to follow? No set rules, no standard patterns, no fixed precedents are available for our guidance. We must think out our way step by step and act by act — this only being our unswerving principle, that not an iota of our Judaism is to be sacrificed.” Knowing his affiliation with Kaplan, it is easy to read his comments about the Community House through a proto-Reconstructionist lens.

The following spring, in April 1925, Rose orchestrated the first known bat mitzvah ceremony in Pittsburgh when four young women were honored in a Friday night service at Beth Shalom. (Lichter did something similar at B’nai Israel in 1928.)

It is also easy to hear Kaplan’s influence in “Universal Israel,” an essay Rose wrote for this newspaper in 1930: “What is most needed is not a conserved Jewry, nor a re-formed Jewry, but an adaptable Jewry. Too much thought has been given to, and too much effort has been expended on, safeguarding Jewish values by external means, on the one hand, and revising Jewish ideals artificially, on the other hand.”

One critique of local history is its lack of methodology and its ignorance of larger historical trends. Here, I agree: My understanding of the development of the Conservative and Reconstructionist movements in the 1920s and 1930s is rudimentary. Ultimately, Beth Shalom became solidly Conservative under Rose. I would be curious to see these early years through the eyes of a scholar with deep insights into that era. PJC

Eric Lidji is the director of the Rauh Jewish Archive at the Heinz History Center. He can be reached at rjarchives@heinzhistorycenter.org or 412-454-6406.