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March 4, 2005
First female pulpit rabbi
Former academic, "Reb Laura" heads Or Shalom.
PAT JOHNSON
Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan – "Reb Laura" to her new
congregants at Or Shalom – represents a litany of "firsts."
Kaplan is Vancouver's first female pulpit rabbi. Her appointment
as spiritual leader of the progressive East Vancouver congregation
represents the first permanent rabbi the shul has had in almost
two years. It is also the first time Kaplan has headed a congregation
since being ordained this past January.
But Kaplan, whose life path has taken her on some twisted roads,
is no newbie to existential questions or spiritual exploration.
For 15 years, she was a professor of philosophy at a major U.S.
university, she has published four books and dozens of scholarly
articles and, in 2001, was recognized as U.S. professor of the year
by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
The intersection of philosophy and religion is a recurring theme
in her work and conversation.
"To me, religious communities are one of the places where people
come with these sorts of questions," Kaplan told the Bulletin.
"Religion gives us different tools to address them than philosophy
does, but you've got to use both tools in both places."
Kaplan's books, among them Philosophy and Everyday Life,
address issues such as how people are drawn to philosophy in a quest
to answer existential questions.
The rabbi, who took over her new position on Jan. 1, grew up in
the New York City neighborhood of Kew Gardens, a multicultural community
with a strong Orthodox Jewish component. Her family belonged to
an Orthodox shul and she attended a Conservative Hebrew day school.
She received a BA in philosophy from Brandeis University and a master's
of education from Cambridge College, both in Massachusetts, and
received her PhD in philosophy and education from Claremont graduate
school in Los Angeles. While at Claremont, she briefly served as
Hillel program manager.
While working on her dissertation, in 1989, she was hired as a philosophy
professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where
she remained until last year.
Ordained by Philadelphia's Aleph Alliance for Jewish Renewal, Kaplan's
spiritual journey has taken her across the Jewish spectrum.
"When I was a teenager and talking to my dad about professional
choices I should make, one of the ones that we talked about was
being a rabbi," she said. "But at that time we were firmly
involved in the Conservative movement in Judaism and he said, 'Wait
a little while and the [conservative movement's Jewish Theological
Seminary] will accept women' and I said, 'I'm not waiting.' "
Though she moved on and reached the peak of an academic career,
she decided to seek ordination and, while continuing her professorial
duties, studied for the rabbinate. Her theology, she explained,
is very much based on the continuity of tradition.
"There's something really amazing about people choosing to
connect with history and about Jews succeeding in being a nation
almost entirely by virtue of our consenting to being a nation and
loving the tradition and wanting to honor what we learned from our
parents, without a homeland, without a Jewish police force that
says you must follow these commandments and do things this way,"
she said. "There's some magic in the fact that people create
and hold onto culture. That's got to be something divine in and
of itself."
The literary nature of Judaism, she said, makes it possible for
contemporary Jews to have direct conversations with the past by
returning to the traditional texts.
"For me, one of the pieces of Judaism is being connected with
other people across time and space," she said.
Her relationship with the divine has been strengthened already by
living in Vancouver.
"There are a lot of ways in which God is revealed to me or
I feel I touch God," she said. "The most obvious one is
nature. Just getting up in the morning and looking at the mountains
and the magic of a clear day ... to me, that is a divine experience."
Kaplan said she doesn't yet know the meaning of her ground-breaking
role as this city's first woman pulpit rabbi.
"I'm used to an environment where that isn't anything special,"
she said. "I don't know what that means for me yet.
As I get to know people and groups around town, I'll get to know
what my limitations are, what I can do, who I can connect with."
The congregation is a reservoir of enormous creative energy, said
the rabbi, as evidenced by the successful way members kept the shul
intact through many months without a rabbi.
The Jewish Renewal movement has dealt with many of the issues facing
other branches of Judaism, as well as a central issue on the Canadian
agenda right now – same-sex marriage.
"The Jewish Renewal movement is in support of same-sex unions,"
she said. For her, though, the matter is plain.
"We're living in a time when everybody is worrying about the
dissolution of the family and when two people come together and
say, 'We want to be a family,' that's a very, very good thing. That's
where I stand."
After less than two months in her new home and as head of a new
congregation, Kaplan admits she is still learning the lay of the
land. Moving from North Carolina to Canada is less of a culture
shock, she said, than moving from New York to the American south.
Though moving to North Carolina 15 years ago was an adjustment,
it was eased by one of the first people she connected with there.
"On my first day of work there, I met my husband," she
said. She and Charles Kaplan, a psychologist by vocation and guitarist
by avocation, now have two children: Eli, 9, and Hillary, 11.
Pat Johnson is a B.C. journalist and commentator.
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