ANTISEMITISM IN AMERICA

A prominent lawmaker stands athwart rising bigotry.

The Senate minority leader recalls a not-so-distant time—1980, the year he was elected to Congress—when prejudice against Jews was clearly waning in America. Today, however, amid a spike in documented antisemitic incidents, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history is more worried “than ever before” about this virulent form of intolerance. This is a sober—yet vivid and wry—book, grounded in the rich particulars of Schumer’s Brooklyn youth. Like a character in a Philip Roth novel, he grew up among fellow Jews who loved baseball, grieved John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and “were extremely proud to be Americans.” He recounts his family’s Jewish holiday celebrations and even shares benign jokes that make light of Jewish stereotypes. He traces antisemitism deep into the past, piggybacking on the work of scholars who’ve argued that bigotry against Jews stems from the relative age of the world’s major religions. Judaism came first, which means that Christianity and Islam “had to explain why the old religion was no longer good enough.” If this part of the book is competent but unoriginal, Schumer is stronger on the 21st century, demonstrating how antisemitism became scalable online, spreading after the 9/11 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. But “the biggest turning point” was Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which was followed by a documented jump in antisemitic incidents and divisive campus demonstrations. The far right has long been “a natural home” for antisemitism, Schumer writes, but offensive bias is present in some far-left claims and protest chants about Israel. Throughout, Schumer’s arguments and anecdotes support his belief that antisemitic tropes lose their power when we “understand the truth about the people who are hated, and how wrong the prejudices are.”

An urgent warning about resurgent prejudice against Jewish people.