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17Kaplan Diary, 16 June 1945 (Volume 13, 1944–1946), found in the Ira and Judith Kaplan
Eisenstein Archives at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Philadelphia.
18It is significant that Agudat HaRabbanim uses the term “rabbis”—transliterated as such in
the Hebrew—for JTS graduates, instead of the Hebrew word for rabbis, “rabbanim.”
19 “Asefat HaHerem,” HaPardes 19, no. 4 (July 1945): 2.
20For an extensive comparison between Kaplan’s text and the 1946 Conservative Sabbath and
Festival Prayer Book, see Eric Caplan, From Ideology to Liturgy: Reconstructionist Worship and
American Liberal Judaism (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2002), 112–120. Caplan
suggests that the Conservative RA editors shared many of the same theological concerns that
Kaplan did, but they responded to them by changing the English translations rather than
the Hebrew prayers themselves. Kaplan and his students certainly knew the contents of the
Conservative siddur, because both Milton Steinberg and Ira Eisenstein were on the original
committee for the siddur, and the main editor of the text, Morris Silverman, conferred with
Kaplan during the editing process. See Caplan, 112.
21 “On Burning of a Prayer Book,” The Jewish Exponent (22 June 1945): 4.
22In defending Kaplan, the RA mentioned explicitly that while the actions of Agudat
HaRabbanim were abhorrent, the Conservative movement did not endorse the siddur. See “On
Burning of a Prayer Book.” The RA published The Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book in 1946.
23Rosenberg specifically pointed to Kaplan’s excision of shefokh hamatkha, a paragraph in
the haggadah that asks God to “Pour out [God’s] wrath on the enemy nations that do not
know [God].”
24Kaplan also confronted this theologically and philosophically troubling issue while writing
the haggadah, particularly in relation to responding to the challenges of the Holocaust. See
Jack Cohen, Major Philosophers of Jewish Prayer in the Twentieth Century (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2000), 163–164. Eisenstein reflected on this in his autobiography:
If the haggadah was to be edifying, and if our purpose was to engage the attention of
young people, we should omit all texts which smacked of cruelty and vengeance. I can
truly testify that he never reckoned with possible gentile reactions. Knuckling under was
a stance he resolutely eschewed.
See Eisenstein, Reconstructing Judaism, 164.
25 “Asefat HaHerem,” 2.
26Ibid. Also see Simon Noveck, Milton Steinberg: Portrait of a Rabbi (New York: Ktav Publishing
House, Inc., 1978), 183.
27The first psalm speaks about not following “in the counsel of the wicked,” a fitting liturgical
piece for an excommunication.
28It is unclear who actually burned the siddur, as the report in HaPardes uses the passive voice.
See “Asefat HaHerem,” 2.
29Noveck, 183.
30 “Asefat HaHerem,” 2.
31The July 1945 issue of HaPardes illustrates this very irony. On the same page as part of the herem
document, there is another article titled “Et Hasereifa Asher Saraf HaShem: Ba’me Enahem?”
(“The burning that God burned: How shall we gain mercy?”), which laments the passing of
Rabbi Aharon Pechenikís’s father, murdered by the Nazis. The parallelism of burning—one
committed against the Jewish people and one by the Jewish people—is eerie.
32 “Nosah Hahlatat HaHerem,” HaPardes 19, no. 4 (July 1945): 3.
33Ibid. 34Ibid. 42 • American Jewish Archives Journal