"The book is as old as fire, as water. It is the memory of the desert where the word found its stone... You cannot burn the book, because the book is made of the very ash that remains after the fire."
Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions, 1963
Hello Friends -
81 years ago, on June 12, 1945, at Manhattan’s McAlpin - one of New York City’s largest Hotels, 200 rabbis from the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada formally assembled to excommunicate Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan.
The ceremony includes a public burning of the Sabbath Prayer Book Kaplan had just published, deemed heretical by the Orthodox rabbis.
It is mind-boggling that such actions could be taken place while the Holocaust was barely over, but this is just one more startling example of the age-old rifts and ruptures tearing the Jewish people apart - dividing the pious and particular from the pluralistic progressives. Whether it’s theology or politics - or both - the heat is still on and sometimes our feuds turn to fires.
You can read more about this shocking event in this article in the Forward - it’s just one of the stories we discussed at our most recent LIVE LEARNING monthly session of our year long course - Judaism: Born Divided?
Book burning go back. 2,700 years in our tradition, and the attempt to ban, burn or suppress truths and ideologies continues today.
Some truths are suppressed when books get banned or burned.
Some truths are hidden when books get written.
Sometimes truth triumphs despite attempts to silence it. Sometimes it does not.
This course exists to explore some hidden and repressed truths- celebrating the multiple truths and narratives that form our histories and inform who we are - and how our journey continues.
From Jeremiah to Josiah, Mordechai Kaplan to the Kaplan Protests - the stories of our ancient and current schism are critical so that we make sense of how we got here and how we navigate ahead.
Check out the sources we read last week, and take an hour to watch the session:
READ: Study Source Sheet
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🚩 Next LIVE LEARNING Session:
Sunday 7/19/26
A Tale of Two Exiles - Mourning Both Jerusalem and Samaria
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Judaism: Born Divided Landing Page
Wishing us all Shabbat Shalom.
Peace שלום سلام
Amichai
My Orthodox uncles from Poland were extremely intolerant towards deviations from orthodoxy. I recently read that such a degree of intolerance was not the case back in Eastern Europe before World War II. An explanation for the change was given as the strong need for replenishment after the horrific losses in the Shoah. Might it be that this prayer book burning reflected such a need?
Hmmm