Did my father believe in God? Daniel Boorstin was among the first Jew­ish Amer­i­can his­to­ri­ans. When I was nine, he was sum­moned before the House Unamer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee, accused of being a Com­mu­nist. With his career hang­ing by a thread, he replied that his ​“bul­wark against Com­mu­nism” was his Jew­ish faith. 

He quot­ed Thomas Jef­fer­son: ​“Can the lib­er­ties of a peo­ple be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis, a con­vic­tion in the minds of the peo­ple that those lib­er­ties are the gift of God?” Daniel swore under oath, ​“I believe that, sir.”

They bought it. This Jew­ish out­sider won the Pulitzer Prize and wrote best-sell­ing books. You read him in Esquire and Reader’s Digest, your chil­dren read about in texts in school in, and he coun­seled nation­al lead­ers. Daniel’s gen­er­a­tion had sur­vived the exis­ten­tial threat of World War II. With the Civ­il Rights move­ment, the arc of our moral uni­verse was bend­ing toward jus­tice. Boorstin was proud of what we were becom­ing and he want­ed you to be proud too.

I read his HUAC tes­ti­mo­ny for the first time when I was thir­ty, and when my father was appoint­ed Librar­i­an of Con­gress. Though we often said Hamotze at din­ner, I still can’t tell you if my father believed in God. I grew up over din­ners packed with talk about impor­tant stuff with­out Judaism com­ing into it.

And so I read his tes­ti­mo­ny again, and I real­ized that Daniel was being lawyer­ly to appease god­fear­ing con­gress­men. He isn’t say­ing that he believes in God. He’s say­ing that not believ­ing makes our lib­er­ties insecure. 

In Atlanta the Jew Leo Frank, a close friend of Daniel’s father, was lynched. In Tul­sa, Daniel lived through the Race Mas­sacre of 1921. Yet Daniel still cel­e­brat­ed America’s genius for inno­va­tion and com­mu­nal effort. How could he do that? 

I wrote a book to find out. 

Late­ly, I’m find­ing deep­er mean­ing in the Yid­dish proverb ​“it’s hard to be a Jew.” We Jews all have ances­tors who lived through dif­fi­cult times. Daniel’s life and work reminds us that what binds us togeth­er as part of the Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty is stronger than what dri­ves us apart. If we can share Daniel’s spir­it, we can share his hope.