Recently my daughter uttered words on the phone that melt every grandparent’s heart: “Your grandchild is eager to speak with you.” When Emma came on the line, she said her third grade class is studying the civil rights struggle. In a worried voice she asked, “Grandpa Jim, Mommy says you were once arrested. Is that true?” Not once, I told her, but three times. “Oh, Grandpa … why?”

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)