J.J. Goldberg May 18, 2010

Jeremiah Riemer writes to suggest that if Elena Kagan is indeed set to become the first Reconstructionist on the Supreme Court since the Civil War, as I joked in a May 10 blog post (playing off her late parents’ reported membership in a Reconstructionist congregation), then it’s time to take a fresh look at the famous dictum by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Jewish Reconstructionism, that tradition should have “a voice but not a veto” in our current moral decision-making. If that is indeed how the nominee sees things, what does it portend for the legal principle of stare decisis, the common-law rule that judges are bound by precedent, as set by previous court rulings? Would Justice Kagan give Roe v. Wade or Brown v. Board of Education a “voice but not a veto”?

Theoretically a good question, but it turns out that Kagan actually does not consider herself a Reconstructionist Jew. Her parents got involved in the Reconstructionist congregation, the West End Synagogue, after the nominee had already grown up and moved out. According to recent reports, she calls herself a Conservative Jew. This should come as pleasing news to the court’s Scalia-Thomas wing, at least until someone clues them in that Conservative Jews and conservative Jews are two completely different things.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis of the crisis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount