I think “Salvation of Judaism” refers to the saving of it - not “salvation” as Christians understand it. There is, of course, no such thing in Judaism. He is suggesting that neither the radical fundamentalism of Orthodoxy nor the “toss-everything-out” liberalism of Reform is the right way to go forward. I’ve said the same thing in a Christian context: neither adherence to dead tradition just because it’s tradition nor rejection of tradition just because it’s tradition is the right way to go forward.

You’re citing a mediaeval *Christian* period. Jews were not part of that movement.

“They belong to those who see no need for welding tradition and experience into a unitary organised mental background.”
See above. The search for a unified theory does not threaten religiosity except where religiosity is misplaced, or science is misguided, or even misquoted by its own exponents.

“They willingly subscribe to the medieval principle that Torah and philosophy have nothing to do with each other, because it saves them a great deal of mental bother.”
Wasn’t the medieval when the scientific was natural philosophy and thoroughly intermingled with religion, mystery, alchemy, and superstition?

“But such is only a small eddy in the main current of Jewish life.”
I need to call BS on the closing paragraph.

This early sentence: “Whenever a tradition contradicts some facts too patent to be denied, or falls below some accepted moral standard, resort is had to artificial interpretations that flout all canons of history and exegesis.”
Seems a sweeping generality. I get the feeling he is not discussing observational facts, ie., earth rotating around the sun, but some social behavior, or other discrepancy with histories: fable vs. historical figure, such as Ruth…

First sentence is a funny study in itself isn’t it? Isreal, judaism is recorded as always wanting to find salvation “within itself” in some form or another, rather than repent and face the mystery of God, and yet always its salvation is by God’s hand.

I think this just mirrors the rebellion of the human heart.

Bear with me for a while: I’m going some where. Kaplan was the founder of Reconstructionism so I don’t think he was quite “destroyed” by post-modernism.

Another triumphalistic screed from the era of Logical Positivism! This was quite typical of the attitude of the cognosceti in the 1920’s. See, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

Note that Logical Positivism questioned all metaphysics as having much of any meaning. That is precisely what your quote above is doing. Logical Positivism actually lasted quite a long long time, all the way until the latter part of the 20th century.

Post-modernism destroyed Logical Positivism as partaking of some of the same errors as the metaphysics it decried.