In 1927, Max Kaplan—a kosher butcher from Virginia, Minnesota, located in the heart of the great Minnesota Iron Range (“Range”)—challenged the practice of Bible verse reading in the city’s public schools. Kaplan v. Independent School District of Virginia is one of many state court cases involving similar issues both before and after the turn of the twentieth century until the Supreme Court of the United States resolved the issue as a matter of federal constitutional law in School District of Abington Township v. Schempp in 1963.
Every case has its story. This is Max Kaplan’s. It is part of a broader story of Jewish acclimation and adaptation to a new environment on the Range and a continuing struggle for religious equality in a climate of religious intolerance fostered in part by the second rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.
The story includes a detailed examination of the legal issues in Max Kaplan’s case, issues that were common to many of the Bible verse reading cases from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, up to Schempp. Those cases raised the issues of whether reading Bible verses from the King James version constituted sectarian instruction, turned the schoolhouse into a place of worship, or interfered with the rights of conscience of children, who with their parents objected to the readings. The challenges were made under state constitutions because the Religion Clauses in the Federal Constitution had not yet been applied to the states by the Supreme Court of the United States. In Kaplan, the Minnesota Supreme Court held the practice to be constitutional under the Minnesota Constitution, a holding not out of line with many of the other state court decisions involving Bible reading and prayer in public schools.
Chapter One covers migration to the Range. Two is devoted to Max Kaplan. Three recounts Christianity on the Range and the response of the Jewish community. Four discusses the Ku Klux Klan. Five establishes the background of religion and Bible reading in the public schools. Six explores religion and the Minnesota Constitution. Seven covers Bible reading in the Virginia public schools, and Eight is the Jewish response. Finally, Nine involves a detailed look at the litigation with the Epilogue closing the story.
Max Kaplan’s story is riveted to his times, of course, but the issues it involves have rippled with distressing familiarity through ours.