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Mordecai M. Kaplan reexamined -- Theorist and activist -- The rational mystic -- Toward a theology of experience -- Religious education for democracy -- On the theology of election -- Other critics -- Naturalism and supernaturalism -- Ethical values in the thought of Bertrand Russell and Mordecai M. Kaplan -- Reconstructionism reexamined and applied -- Reconstructionism revisited -- A state with a Jewish majority -- The concept of a Jewish state -- What is a Zionist state? -- The Western Wall -- A theology of ethics -- Is this the meaning of my life? -- A rational approach to the idea of God -- When a judge steps off the bench

In this article we intend undertake a reading of ancient judaism, or veterotestamentary, in some of its main aspects, in contrast to the Machiavellian view of the role of religion in the organization and expansion of the State. The first step of this enterprise will be given by exposing the founding and delineanting features of the ancient Jewish tradition, especially in the books that make up the so-called Old Testament, demonstranting the using of religion in the ordination and expansion of the State, as well as in the formation of the individual. In a second moment we will demonstrate how to create a new Jewish tradition, influenced and influential on the ancient Greek world, early in the Christian era which will be assimilated and explored in its mystical bias in Renaissance humanism. This Hellenistic Judaism tradition will be best known and assimilated in the European erudite circles of the Renaissance. Finally, we will try to demonstrate how the constitutive features of ancient Judaism, to the detriment of Hellenistic Judaism, can be read in the light of Machiavellian description of the role of religion in the organization and expansion of the State and the formation of the individual.