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Edward Kaplan, a scholar of 19th Century French Literature and Religious Studies, died at NewBridge on the Charles surrounded by his family on February 7, 2024. The cause of death was Lewy body disease.
Edward Kaplan taught at the Department of Romance Studies, and in the Religious Studies Program which he founded, at Brandeis University where he was Kevy and Hortense Kaiserman Professor in the Humanities, and a Fellow at the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry.
Internationally known for his research on the French Revolution historian Jules Michele, and especially on the 19th Century Romantic poet Charles Baudelaire, Kaplan published seminal books on Baudelaire’s prose poems, Le Spleen de Paris, Petite Poems en Prose. Kaplan’s English translation the latter, The Parisian Prowler, won the National Lewis Galantière Prize for the best work in translation in 1990. Kaplan’s signature approach to literary scholarship and teaching was to illuminate the intersection of the ethical, esthetic, and religious aspects in the creative process.
Early in his career, teaching at Amherst College in Western Massachusetts, while still immersed in the study and publishing books on Michelet, Kaplan ventured into the scholarship on the nature of religious experiences. This interest started in the mid-1960s when Kaplan, then a graduate student at Columbia University working on his PhD in French literature, met Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. The personal, intellectual, and scholarly relationship that developed between the esteemed theologian and the nascent graduate student has changed and profoundly shaped the entire trajectory of Kaplan’s life and career.
Under the influence of his father, Kivie Kaplan who was National President of the NAACP, Edward developed deep commitment to social action and interest in the spiritual roots of non-violence. With Kivie Kaplan, He attended NAACP conventions and marched in Selma. Knowing his son’s emerging interest in religious mysticism, Kivie Kaplan on MLK’s advice introduced Edward to Heschel.
Heschel’s writings on the religious aspects of non-violent resistance to injustice, to the blaspheme of racism and the evil of the War in Vietnam, brought Edward into the orbit of Heschel’s students, mentees, and disciples. It was at that time that Kaplan started his scholarship of Heschel’s life and work, resulting in many books, scholarly articles, lectures and conferences. Kaplan’s definitive two-volume biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel was published with Yale University Press. Volume 1, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Prophetic Witness, coauthored with Samuel H. Dresner, came out in 1998 and was a National Jewish Book Award finalist in Jewish Scholarship Category. Volume 2, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972, published in 2007, was a winner of the National Jewish Book Award in the American Jewish Studies category. Kaplan’s one-volume biography of Heschel, directed for general readership was published by the Jewish Publication Society in 2019, his last book. In all, Kaplan authored 18 Books and almost 200 scholarly articles and reviews.
Edward Kivie Kaplan was born in Boston on March 4, 1942. His father Kivie Kaplan was a successful Jewish businessman in the leather tanning industry. Edward’s mother, Emily (Rogers) Kaplan was a homemaker. Edward attended Newton public schools, high school at Deerfield Academy, and Brown University where he majored in French and graduated in 1964. It was during his Junior Year in France that he became determined to pursue academic career in French Literature as a teacher, scholar, and writer. As the first person in his family to go to college, this was as bold a decision as it was risky. But that year at the Sorbonne formed in him an irresistible interest in literary scholarship, and in study of literature’s profound effects on human experience and the history of ideas. After completing his PhD degree in French Literature at Columbia University in 1970, he taught French at Barnard College, and then at Amherst College in l97l–l978. Since 1978, he was at Brandeis University in Waltham MA until his retirement in 2015.
Edward married Alexandra Gilden in 1968. They divorced in 1975, and she died in 2002. In 1986, Edward married Janna (Lipmanov) Kaplan, a Brandeis neuroscientist and a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union fleeing antisemitic persecution. In addition to his wife Janna and son Jeremy (Rebecca Ballantine) Kaplan and their children Eli, Lhakyi, Dechen, Bella and Cassie Ballantine-Kaplan, Edward is survived by his two children from his second marriage: son Aaron (Será Godfrey) Kaplan and their children, Zeppelin Godfrey-Grantz, Kivie and Fox Godfrey-Kaplan, and daughter Sima (Ryan Dobran) Kaplan.
A devoted family man, Edward was able not only to think deeply, but also to feel deeply. As his disease progressed and his ability to think coherently diminished, his unique capacity to feel deeply – his profound sensitivity – remained at the core of his sweet, thoughtful, loving nature.
Services at Temple Sinai, 25 Canton St., Sharon, MA on Friday, February 9, 2024, at 12:00 noon. Interment at Sharon Memorial Park. Shiva at his late home, Sat-Wed 7-9 PM. In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made to Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC), 2027 Massachusetts Ave. NW at Kivie Kaplan Way, Washington, DC 20036.
