Dana Evan Kaplan

In 2013, Kaplan wrote The New Reform Judaism: Challenges and Reflections, published by the Jewish Publication Society, with foreword by Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie and afterword by Rabbi Rick Jacobs. In it, Kaplan describes how the American Reform movement faces enormous challenges in the coming years. He argues that in order to remain vibrant and active, the movement will need to develop convincing justifications for maintaining the Jewish people as an ethno-religious group in an era where boundaries and borders of all kinds are fading if not disappearing entirely. In his view, this will necessitate creating a Judaism that will focus not so much on loyalty to community but on innovative practices to engage the individual in the search for existential meaning.

His 2009 book, Contemporary American Judaism: Transformation and Renewal, has been alternately praised for taking new approaches to Jewish religiosity seriously and condemned for what some have seen as an excessively non-judgmental approach to trivial irrelevancies. Kaplan argued that changing social trends had completely transformed the nature of non-Orthodox Judaism in America. The American Jewish religious denominations were no longer as important as they had been in the thirty or thirty-five year period following World War II and were increasingly irrelevant in a time of post-denominationalism. He credits the "re-engagement with spirituality" as providing the motivation for new forms of Jewish life, which are described in the last three chapters of the book: "Radical Responses to the Suburban Experience," "The Popularization of Jewish Mystical Outreach," and "Herculean Efforts at Synagogue Renewal." Rabbi Lance Sussman, writing in The Jewish Review of Books, praised the final three chapters: "Here, Kaplan is clearly breaking new ground and writing a new narrative for twenty-first century American Judaism."

Kaplan first became known following the 2003 publication of his book American Reform Judaism: An Introduction. He has also written on other subjects, including American Jewish history and Jews in various diaspora communities. Kaplan, influenced by Rodney Stark and other sociologists of religion who apply the Rational Choice Theory to the study of American religious denominationalism, argued that the American Reform Movement needed to raise their demands in order to increase the production of "collective religious commodities," the "religious goods" essential for the continued vitality of the religious group. Kaplan argued that the concept of religious autonomy, while admirable in theory, had produced a negative cycle of apathy and alienation in Reform temples throughout the United States. The book was featured as the subject of a panel discussion in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought with responses from leaders of the various American Jewish denominations.

Kaplan was born in Manhattan and grew up in New York until the age of fourteen when he moved to Waterbury, Connecticut. He studied at Ramaz School, Friends Seminary, and Chase Collegiate School. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Yeshiva University, received rabbinical ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem in 1994 and a PhD in History from Tel Aviv University in 1997.

Dana Evan Kaplan (born October 29, 1960) is a Reform rabbi known for his writings on Reform Judaism and American Judaism. He has advocated for a theologically coherent approach to Reform Judaism rather than encouraging a pluralistic approach to belief without limits.