It’s worth chronicling these failures in part because the book fails in interesting and telling ways. Weisman does not excavate enough Zionist history to recognize the uncanny parallel between his fears and those of Jewish thinkers past, but this ripple of anxiety through the generations is one of the reasons why this moment in America politics is so powerful. Like the Jews of today, many of Europe’s early 20th-century Jews were highly secular and assimilated, and this may have made them slower to address the deadly threat of rising bigotry in their time. Anti-Semitism provides a framework for thinking about other problems of extremism and xenophobia, as well. Its patterns often echo kindred hatreds; its persistence is instructive for thinking about what’s ahead.