Communalist and Dispersionist Approaches to American Jewish History in an Increasingly Post-Jewish Era (Essay)

About fifty years ago there came to a head an often animated controversy over whether the federal census of 1960 should include religious categories. The census had changed its character from decade to decade, but had always counted people by what were then called, and by the Census Bureau today are still called, "races." Never had the federal census counted people by religion. In the middle 1950s, a time when religious identity was especially popular among Americans--this was, after all, the era of Will Herberg's Protestant-Catholic-Jew (1955), which powerfully reinforced the idea that religious rather than racial or class identities were what really mattered in the United States--the adding of religion to the census had wide appeal. The Eisenhower administration, which participated heavily in the Cold War sloganeering that contrasted "godless communism" to the godly United States, looked favorably on the idea. Catholic groups were vocally enthusiastic about it. But Jewish organizations were at first reserved, and then increasingly hostile to it. Between 1956 and 1958, the American Jewish Congress and other Jewish organizations worked hard to stop the plan, especially by lobbying members of Congress. In 1958 the Jewish organizations were able to declare victory. The Eisenhower administration decided it was too controversial. (1) I invoke this long-forgotten controversy, the details of which have been carefully set forth by Kevin Shultz, because the concerns voiced by Jewish opponents of the counting of Americans by religion offer a convenient window on long-term issues regarding the place of Jews in American life, the resolution of which affects the questions I address here: how do we today define the field of American Jewish history, and how does that field now relate to the larger field of American history?