Max Kadushin

Max Kadushin (Belarusian: Макс Кадушын; December 6, 1895, Minsk – July 23, 1980) was a Conservative rabbi best known for his organic philosophy of rabbinics.

Biography

After graduating from New York University, Kadushin studied for the rabbinate at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America during the 1920s. There he encountered Mordecai Kaplan and soon became a key figure in Kaplan's Reconstructionist Judaism movement. As his studies in aggadah continued during the late 1920s, however, he found himself drifting away from Kaplan's decidedly modernist approach to rabbinics and began to argue for a more aftermodernist approach—one that placed greater weight on the enduring significance of the aggadah.

In 1921, Kadushin became the rabbi of Congregation B'nai Israel of Washington Heights in New York City. In 1923 he married Evelyn Garfiel, a psychologist and professor, who later became well known for her book on Jewish prayer, The Service of the Heart (1958). Their son, Charles Kadushin, became a notable sociologist and social network analyst at Columbia University and later, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.