In an urgent and personal new book, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sheds light on the Jewish American experience and sounds the alarm about the troubling resurgence of antisemitism. When it comes to the history of the Jewish people, there is a national and global crisis of misunderstanding.
The personal parts of the book are quite moving ... There are parts that are funny, too ... The book is weaker, though, when it is less personal, especially when Schumer turns his hand to analysis of history and present politics ... Schumer’s omissions are especially evident in his analysis of antisemitism on the left ... The warning [the book] offers struggles to live up to the moment in which it is being published ... This book comes across as earnest and heartfelt. Reading it, however, made me realize that I didn’t want a warning on antisemitism. I wanted the highest-elected Jewish official in American history to meet a moment that has already arrived.
Self-congratulation is a running theme in Antisemitism in America , which doubles as a political memoir and is more interesting in that mode than as a polemic about its titular subject ... What he has to say about antisemitism is predictable, redundant, and only interesting by virtue of who he is ... Who Schumer is, on the other hand, is interesting, and it does come through in many parts of Antisemitism in America ... Callous ... Palestinians in general receive vanishingly little attention in Antisemitism in America .
