Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism

Mordecai M. Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist movement, was the most influential and controversial radical Jewish thinker in the 20th century. Examining the intellectual influences that prompted Kaplan to reject fundamental Orthodox precepts, Jeffrey S. Gurock and Jacob J. Schacter ask a question crucial to the understanding of any religion: can an established religious group learn from a heretic who has rejected its most fundamental beliefs?