Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century

<p>Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century is the first critical examination of the early life of Mordecai Caplet—the sources of his inspiration the evolution of his thought as a religious ideologue and his inner struggles.<br /><br />Kaplan is perhaps the most important Jewish thinker to appear on the American scene in the last one hundred years. Arriving in the United States as a boy growing up in New York City becoming thoroughly Americanized he struggled to find ways of making Judaism compatible with the American experience and the modern temper.<br /><br />Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century returns to the freshness of Kaplan's earliest formulations and concludes with the publication of Judaism as a Civilization in 1934. Based on a mass of unpublished letters sermons and a twenty-seven volume journal this richly textured biography reappraises Kaplan's significance and offers an original and intimate look at the man his mind and his work.</p>