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The article responds to the preceding article by David A. Hollinger on the study of American Jewish history, and why it has been overlooked withing the larger field of U.S. history. Hollinger's concepts of the "communalist" and "dispersionist" approaches to American Jewish history are discussed, and his assertion that American Jewish historians have been overly communalist, or concerned primarily with self-consciously Jewish people and organizations, is critiqued. Also discussed are the concepts of multiculturalism and Jewish identity in the United States.

The article responds to a preceding article by David A. Hollinger on the study of American Jewish history and its place in the larger field of U.S. history. Hollinger's concepts of "communalist" and "dispersionist" approaches to American Jewish history are reviewed, and the atmosphere of antisemitism that remained in American academia in the 1950s and 1960s is discussed, including the prejudice faced by Jewish graduate students and professors. The author then relates his own experiences as a Jewish historian.