Saturday, April 18, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org

The Thirteen Wants — Mordecai M. Kaplan

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Mordecai M. Kaplan

Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881–1983), the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism and one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, drafted these thirteen affirmations as a modern counterpart to Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Faith. Where Maimonides declared what the Jew must believe, Kaplan articulated what the modern Jew wants from religion — a God conceived not as a supernatural person but as the Power that makes for salvation, a Torah understood as the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people, and an Israel that is a living community rather than a mere theological category.

Composed in 1926 for the dedication of the new headquarters of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ) in New York, the Thirteen Wants were later incorporated into the SAJ's Sabbath prayerbook under the title "The Criteria of Jewish Loyalty." They reflect Kaplan's lifelong project of rethinking Judaism in dialogue with American pragmatism, Durkheimian sociology, and the naturalistic theology he called Reconstructionism — a religious philosophy that refused supernaturalism while insisting on the civilizational depth of Jewish practice.

The document belongs to the tradition of Maimonidean enumeration — thirteen principles as a structural echo of the Rambam's own Thirteen Principles of Faith — but inverts the form. Where Maimonides issued doctrinal demands ("I believe with perfect faith..."), Kaplan issues aspirational requests. The shift from creed to want is itself the theology: Judaism not as a system of obligatory belief but as a civilization that should answer the real hungers of its people.

A prayer composed by Mordecai Kaplan in 1926 for the dedication of the new headquarters of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ), the following were included in the Sabbath prayerbook as "The Criteria of Jewish Loyalty."

  • We want Judaism to help us overcome temptation, doubt and discouragement.
  • We want Judaism to imbue us with a sense of responsibility for the righteous use of the blessings wherewith God endows us.
  • We want the Jew so to be trusted that his yea will be taken as yea, and his nay as nay.
  • We want to learn how to utilize our leisure to best advantage, physically, intellectually, and spiritually.
  • We want the Jewish home to live up to its traditional standards of virtue and piety.
  • We want the Jewish upbringing of our children to further their moral and spiritual growth, and to enable them to accept with joy their heritage as Jews.
  • We want the synagogue to enable us to worship God in sincerity and in truth.
  • We want our religious traditions to be interpreted in terms of understandable experience and to be made relevant to our present-day needs.
  • We want to participate in the upbuilding of Eretz Yisrael as a means to the renaissance of the Jewish spirit.
  • We want Judaism to find rich, manifold and ever new expression in philosophy, letters and the arts.
  • We want all forms of Jewish organization to make for spiritual purpose and ethical endeavor.
  • We want the unity of Israel throughout the world to be fostered through mutual help in time of need, and through cooperation in the furtherance of Judaism at all time.
  • We want Judaism to function as a potent influence for justice, freedom and peace in the life of men and nations.

Colophon

Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881–1983) was born in Lithuania and emigrated to the United States as a child. He was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he taught for over fifty years, and founded the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in New York in 1922. His major work, Judaism as a Civilization (1934), argued that Judaism is not merely a religion but a complete civilizational complex — encompassing language, land, history, culture, and ethics — and that modernity requires the conscious reconstruction of that civilization rather than its reform or rejection. In 1968 he co-founded the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, establishing Reconstructionism as an independent Jewish denomination.

This text is in the public domain. Sourced from the sacred-texts.com archive. The Thirteen Wants were first published in the SAJ's Sabbath prayer book and are reproduced as printed there; the opening descriptive paragraph is Kaplan's own preface to the list.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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