Organic Thinking: A Study in Rabbinic Thought

Born in Minsk, the rabbinics scholar Max Kadushin immigrated to Seattle in 1897. He received his undergraduate education at New York University and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1920. He held pulpits in New York City and Chicago, served as director of the Hillel organization at the University of Wisconsin from 1931 to 1942, and taught at Jewish schools. In 1960 he began teaching rabbinics and ethics at the Jewish Theological Seminary. While a student there he had come under the influence of Mordecai Kaplan, but he later moved away from Reconstructionism and argued for the enduring significance of the agadah. Where other scholars characterized rabbinic thought as random and unsystematic, Kadushin believed that a small number of concepts informed and integrated the writings of the ancient rabbis.