Sad News: Edward "Ed" Kaplan
February 14 2024,
Dear Faculty Colleagues,
I write to share the sad news of the passing of Professor Emeritus Edward K. Kaplan, who died peacefully at NewBridge on the Charles Memory Care facility on February 7, 2024. The son of the noted civil rights pioneer Kivie Kaplan, Ed was born and raised in Newton, MA. He attended Brown University where he received a BA (1964) and then Columbia University where he was awarded an MA (1966) and a PhD (1970).
After teaching at Amherst College, Ed joined the Brandeis faculty in 1978, quickly rising through the ranks of Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Full Professor before being named the Kevy and Hortense Kaiserman Professor in the Humanities in 2003. In the 37 years prior to his retirement in 2015, Ed served the university in various capacities, as Chair of the Department of Romance Studies (formerly Romance Languages and Literatures), Chair of the Program in Religious Studies, and as Research Associate in the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry.
Ed’s research and teaching interests ranged widely, from French language and literature, including French Romanticism, to aesthetics, poetry, and US religious history and thought. He had a particular interest in Jules Michelet, Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, contemporary French poets Yves Bonnefoy and Edmond Jabès, and especially Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Ed was a committed, prolific, and noted scholar. He wrote more than a hundred and fifty articles and reviews as well as fifteen well-received books including Michelet's Poetic Vision: A Romantic Philosophy of Nature, Man, and Woman (1977), Mother Death: The Journal of Jules Michelet, 1815-1850 (1984), Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972 (2007), Holiness in Words: Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Politics of Piety (1996) and Abraham Joshua Heschel, Prophetic Witness, with Samuel Dresner. Ed’s last book, a one-volume biography of Heschel, was published by the Jewish Publication Society in November 2019.
Ed played a significant role in introducing and explaining Heschel to the French-speaking world. His Holiness in Words was translated into French in 1999 and was also translated into Italian in 2009. His books on Baudelaire include his translation of Le Spleen de Paris and Petits Poèmes en prose (The Parisian Prowler, 1989); a classroom edition of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (2010); Baudelaire et le Spleen de Paris: l’esthétique, l’éthique, et le religieux (1990). Many of these books received prizes such as the Louis Gantière Prize, for The Parisian Prowler, and the National Jewish Book Award for American Jewish Studies for Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Prophetic Witness, co-authored with Samuel Dresner, was a National Jewish Book Award finalist for Jewish Scholarship Category.
A learned and generous teacher, Ed was also invited to teach at highly prestigious institutions such as the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris (2006) and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy (2012). He also appeared on radio several times, especially in France where he was sought out to discuss Heschel and other issues dealing with American Jewish culture.
Ed was a wonderful colleague who gave tirelessly of his time to the department and the university, even after his own retirement. He served on important committees and was deeply involved in formal and informal discussions of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Brandeis. He was a proud Brandeisian, who lent his fair and balanced views in difficult situations, and his joyful connection to people in those moments of achievement – most lately the 75th anniversary ceremonies along with his wife Janna. He will be remembered by many in the Department of Romance Studies and beyond for his counsel and advice, and, above all, his extraordinary integrity, kindness and generosity.
Ed is survived by his beloved wife Janna (Eugenia Lipmanov) Kaplan; his children Jeremy Kaplan and his wife Rebecca Ballantine, Aaron Kaplan and his wife Será Godfrey-Kaplan, and Sima Kaplan and her husband Ryan Dobran; his grandchildren Eli, Lhakyi, Dechen, Bella, and Cassie Ballantine-Kaplan, Zeppelin Godfrey-Grantz, Kivie and Fox Godfrey-Kaplan. He is predeceased by his parents Kivie and Emily Kaplan, his sisters Sylvia Grossman and Jean Green, and his first wife of seven years, Alexandra Gilden.
I am grateful to Janna Kaplan, Fernando Rosenberg, James Mandrell, and Michael Randall for their contributions to this memoriam.
Sincerely,
Carol
Carol A. Fierke
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs