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From 1913–1918, the United Synagogue of America remained staunchly committed to diversity. Its members overlooked their vast differences, choosing instead to work together to implement Schechter's vision. Not everybody, however, believed that this was the best path for strengthening traditional Judaism in America. This chapter focuses on the two disciples who challenged Schechter's inclusivity: Mordecai Kaplan the “heretic” and Herbert S. Goldstein the “maverick.” The experiences of Kaplan and Goldstein demonstrate that prior to 1927 the United Synagogue did not represent a distinct, third religious movement with boundaries that clearly distinguished it from other movements. Instead, it was an ethnoreligious group with elastic boundaries that stretched wide enough to unify the disciples who chose to join forces to implement the vision of Solomon Schechter.

This chapter compares three twentieth and twenty-first century overviews of Jewish culture and civilization through the works of Mordecai Kaplan, Louis Finkelstein, and David Biale. It addresses criticisms to some of the treasured dichotomies of what might be called “Judaism”. It also discusses exile versus sovereignty, Jewish versus non-Jewish culture, elite versus popular culture, and Jewish distinctiveness versus cultural hybridity and pluralism. The chapter reveals the modern topos of the Jewish contribution to civilization that can be traced back to Moses Mendelssohn, who argued that the Jews had anticipated modernity by removing coercion from religion. It mentions Jewish writers who strove to persuade that the Jews deserved to enter Western civilization.

This chapter focuses on 'Jewish civilization', in which the term served the interests of Jewish intellectuals far better when counterpoised against the German Romantic notion of a distinct national culture. It probes the significance of 'civilization' at several key rhetorical moments during the last two hundred years. It also recounts the event when German Jews endeavoured to reach a high standard of civilization through concerted self-cultivation and social integration in the early nineteenth century. The chapter talks about European Jews who applied their own standards of 'civilization' to other 'oriental' Jews. It describes the years between the Great Depression and the outbreak of the Second World War, when Mordecai Kaplan equated Jewish peoplehood and civilization.

The idea of a Jewish body provides the background to understand the major Jewish migrations, the core features of modern Jewish politics, the transformation of Judaism as a religion and the role played by Jews in the Minority Rights Movement. Eastern European Jews’ immigration to the United States or Palestine as two sides of the same coin.