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Reading Mordecai M. Kaplan as an "Autistic Hero"
In the 70 faces of Torah, we see things anew as we shift in our focus, our understanding, our culture, and our civilization. We have read the Torah itself from a feminist lens, as a mythological document, as a compendium, and more. Come hear soon-to-be rabbi Mati Boulakia-Bortnick as he uncovers a new facet of Kaplan.
Mordecai M. Kaplan built the architecture of American Jewish life and remained, by his own account, profoundly alone inside it. His diaries describe masking before the word existed, meltdowns he had no language for, and a hyperfocus that could fix on one mispronounced vowel for a week. It isn’t incidental or interesting colour to his life story, but a mind working the way many autistic minds work: systemic, uncompromising, and unwilling to perform to others' arbitrary standards. Popular writing on Kaplan has for decades used words like “paradox” and “enigma” to explain what a disability lens would simply call autistic. Mati doesn’t seek to diagnose Kaplan – it’s about reading him the way queer historians have long read Whitman. He argues Kaplan wasn’t monumental despite the traits that isolated him, he was monumental because of them.
Sunday, October 11, 2026 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)
Professor Joselit is the Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History at the George Washington University, and the author of the recently-released book Mordecai M. Kaplan: Restless Soul.
The mission of the Kaplan Center is to disseminate and promote the thought and writings of Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan and to advance the agenda of the Kaplanian approach to Judaism in the 21st century.
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