“That Religion Be Not a Cloak for Hypocrisy,” by Rabbi Mordecai Menaḥem Kaplan can be found on p. 435-5 of his The Sabbath Prayer Book (New York: The Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945). The Sabbath Prayer Book became a victim of religious zealotry when it was publicly burned shortly after its initial publication. “Kaplan’s siddur was burned by an ultra-Orthodox organization, the Agudat Ha-rabbanim of the United States and Canada, in a ceremony at the McAlpin Hotel on June 15, 1945. It was no accident that this group chose the week when parshat Korach, the section from the Torah containing the story of the great rebellion against Moses in the desert, was read in synagogue.”^[1] Mel Scult in The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan (Indiana University Press 2013), ch. 9 “Salvation Embodied: The Vehicle of Mitzvot,” p. 196. 

During the midsummer Three Weeks “beyn haMitsrim” (between the narrow-places — between the Fasts of 17 Tammuz and 9 Av) we are enjoined to consider the struggle within our community of sinat ḥinam (hatred without cause) or intra-communal hatred, a cause by which the second temple was destroyed a cause for which the realization of the third temple era is continually deferred. This past week on the morning celebrating the New Moon of Av (Rosh Ḥodesh Menaḥem Av), the Women of the Wall at the Kotel in Jerusalem again experienced violent and hateful demonstrations during their worship including the public burning of their siddur. May every book burner hear the prophetic voice of Heinrich Heine who in Germany in 1821 wrote: “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings” (Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen)^[2] Quote from Heinrich Heine’s play Almansor, written 1821–1822.  and broaden the borders of their disagreement to accept in its earnest spirit the differences by which their fellows love and pursue the holiness and divinity that suffuse every aspect of creation, and together seek to circumscribe the predatory instinct in our human nature in its appetite for violence and bloodshed.

I have adapted the original text of this prayer to remove archaisms. –Aharon N. Varady

Source(s)

Plaque at the Nazi book burning memorial on Bebelplatz in Berlin, Germany. The plaque has a quote from Heinrich Heine’s play Almansor (play, written 1821–1822). “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings” (Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen) about burning of Quran in Granada that was expected to be followed by burning humans (Muslims then Jews) in the 1500s. (credit: Fjmustak, license: CC BY-SA)

“That Religion Be Not a Cloak for Hypocrisy, by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1945)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Mordecai Kaplan

Mordecai Menahem Kaplan (June 11, 1881 – November 8, 1983), was a rabbi, essayist and Jewish educator and the co-founder of Reconstructionist Judaism along with his son-in-law Ira Eisenstein.

Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)

Works of related interest:

 

Life Is What We Make It, a prayer-poem based on the writings of Rabbi Leo Baeck by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1945)

An American Covenant of Brotherhood, by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan and Eugene Kohn (1945)

The Pious Man, a prayer-poem by Mordecai Kaplan adapted from the essay “An Analysis of Piety” by Abraham Joshua Heschel (1942)

Courage to Withstand the Ridicule of the Worldly, a prayer by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1945)

“That America’s Heroes Shall Not Have Died in Vain” with a special El Malé Raḥamim prayer for Memorial Day, by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1945)

That America Fulfil the Promise of Its Founding, a prayer for Independence Day by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1945)

Salvation through Labor, a prayer for the Sabbath before Labor Day, adapted from the writings of A.D. Gordon by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1945)

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