Decoding “God”: Reconstructionist Theologies
Rabbi Sid Schwarz
Three-part course offered at
Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation (Bethesda, MD), March 2025
Despite surging interest in spirituality in American culture, “God” language often is the single greatest barrier keeping people away from conventional religious institutions. Is God a Being? Does God have the power to suspend the laws of nature? Is the Bible the word of “God”? Did God create the human or did humans create God? All of these questions were starting points for the work of Mordecai Kaplan as he began his work to “reconstruct” Judaism in the early 20th century in a more rationalist key for moderns. In this three-part course, Rabbi Sid will explore three different Reconstructionist theologians, charting the, somewhat surprising, evolution of non-supernatural theology over the last 50 years.
- Session 1-Mordecai Kaplan and Religious Humanism
- Session 2- Harold Schulweis and Predicate Theology
- Session 3- Arthur Green and Neo-Hasidism