Priceless: The Essays of David Dalin

October 30, 2022 / Kurt F. Stone

October 30, 2020

When you stop and think about it, it should come as no surprise that American Jewish history is still a relatively new academic field. Then too, American history itself, as compared to, let’s say, Egyptian, or Greek or even Russian history, is still, relatively speaking, in its infancy. The first Jews did not make it to America until 1654; the first to write about the Jewish presence, and contributions to this new land didn’t seriously put pen to paper until the 1930s. And that historian, Hebrew Union College’s Jacob Rader Marcus (1896-1995) was originally a world-renowned scholar of the Jews of the Medieval World. In a very real sense, for those engaged in studying, research and writing of American Jewish history, Dr. Marcus is the father/mentor of us all. (Ironically, the rabbi I grew up with, Morton A. Bauman [1912-1993] served as Dr. Marcus’ student assistant/editor for his first book in 1937; I, in turn was his student assistant/editor for one of his last books, 1981’s The American Jewish Woman, A Documentary History.

Among the truly gifted and prodigious students and academic descendants of Dr. Marcus are Lance Sussman, Gary Zola (the longtime director of the Jacob R. Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (and my former upstairs neighbor), Jonathan Sarna (the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History in the department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University - and my one-time cantor), and David Dalin, my dear friend and fellow Californian, and easily one of the current generation’s finest and most illuminating scholars in the field of American Jewish history.

Over the past 40 or so years, Professor Dalin, Senior Research Fellow at Brandeis University and a member of the academic advisory and editorial board of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, has written more than a dozen fascinating books including The Myth of Hitler's Pope, The Presidents of the United States and the Jews, Harold Stassen: The Life and Perennial Candidacy of the Progressive Republicans and Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court: From Brandeis to Kagan (which was nominated for the National Jewish Book Award for best biography), as well as dozens upon dozens of trenchant, eminently readable essays on virtually every aspect of the American Jewish experience.

Dr. Dalin’s (who was also ordained as a Conservative Rabbi at JTS in 1980 latest book is entitled Jews and American Public Life, (2022, Academic Studies Press) It is a collection of 16 of his most thoughtful essays published over the past four decades. Subtitled Essays on American Jewish History and Politics, this work admirably showcases the extent of Dalin’s wide-ranging academic interests and scholarly passions. Divided into 7 parts, Dalin’s essays deal with the lives and accomplishments of such notables as Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish Justice of the Supreme Court, and baseball superstars Hank Greenberg and pitcher Sandy Koufax (to date the only Jewish members of the Baseball Hall of Fame). Of far greater interest - at least to this reader - are Dalin’s essays in which he “reintroduces” us to such national treasures as:

Judge Mayer Sulzberger (1843-1923), longtime judge of the court of common pleas in Philadelphia, communal leader par excellent and likely best best known American Jew of his time;
Louis Marshall (1856-1929), preeminent corporate, constitutional and civil rights lawyer, advisor to presidents, conservationist, one of the founders of the American Jewish Committee as well as an early director of the NAACP, and
Cyrus Adler (1867-1940), President of Dropsie College, longtime Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, a communal leader instrumental in the rescue and job-placement of refugee Jewish scholars from Hitler’s Europe, and without a doubt, the greatest Jewish bibliophile in American history;

Elsewhere in this brief (287 pages) volume, Dalin focuses attention on the critical role American Jews have played in the historic debate over the wall separating Church and State, and the now forgotten time when Nazis planned to stage a march in the largely Jewish suburb of Skokie, just outside Chicago. Dalin’s eye for - and understanding of - the drama of American politics and the role Jews have played in it - as Republicans (which a majority of American Jews were until FDR) and Democrats as well as Socialists and progressives - is first-rate; he has intimate knowledge of the cast, a highly developed understanding of its script, and an unceasing curiosity about what it all means.

To read Dr. Dalin’s collection of essays is to be filled with both awe and pride at just how much Jewish attorneys, communal leaders, philanthropists - even athletes - have contributed to American greatness. As a people, we have spent eons debating and disagreeing with one another about virtually everything under the sun; indeed, even our greatest literary work, Talmud Bavli, has been called “an eternal argument between one generation and another” And yet, we have long been guided by the sage Hillel’s dictum ah tifrosh min ha-tzibor , namely, ‘Never separate yourself from the community,’ in order to create a place where all - regardless of religion, ethnicity or political position - may seek a better, more humane future.

David Dalin’s essays are priceless; his research and knowledge inexhaustible; his powers of communication both accessible and entertaining. Indeed, he is one of the best and brightest historians in what is, when all is said and done, a relatively new field of academic inquiry.

As we say in Hebrew, Mazal tov v’yishar koakh . . . “Congratulations, and may your power be increased.”

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