When the Supreme Court struck down school-sponsored Bible reading in 1963, it did something rare: it named an expert witness. In Abington School District v. Schempp, the Court repeatedly identified Dr. Solomon Grayzel — a rabbi and renowned Jewish scholar — in its opinion.

Supreme Court majorities almost never do that. But the Schempp Court didn’t merely mention Grayzel in passing. It summarized his testimony at length, and Justice William Brennan quoted him directly in a separate concurrence.

Grayzel was a towering figure in American Jewish scholarship. He led the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) for nearly three decades, authored the influential A History of the Jews (1947), and became one of the country’s most respected religious historians and biblical scholars. 

He was also my great-great-uncle.

Gratz College has now published his full trial testimony online for the first time, and reading it — sixty years later, with Louisiana and Texas moving to require state-approved versions of the Ten Commandments displayed in public-school classrooms — feels less like archival recovery and more like a sober reminder.

Like many American school districts during the post-war years, Abington, Pennsylvania began the day with Bible verses and the Lord’s Prayer. The school district defended the practice as “nonsectarian,” in part because it prohibited commentary before or after the reading, arguing that outlawing introductions, explanations, or interpretations........

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