>In short order, Weisman received a tweet from someone calling himself “CyberTrump” that read simply “Hello (((Weisman))).” When he responded quizzically to CyberTrump, Weisman inadvertently enabled what became an avalanche of offensive tweets from people who were outraged that one elite media personality with a Jewish-sounding name would reference another who dared to criticize what one of them called “Trump God Emperor.”

>The blitzkrieg by alt-right white supremacists had been set off by CyberTrump’s use of the triple parentheses around Weisman’s name, something that – please, just take my word for it – made it easier for Jew-haters to single him out for abuse in cyberspace.

>The thousands of messages Weisman subsequently received employed nearly every vile Jewish stereotype, both written and graphic, one can imagine. Although they don’t seem to have had much to do with Weisman – who, after all, had just been retweeting a newspaper column – they were characterized by a typical alt-right defensiveness that suggested “you left me no choice.”

>This, Weisman tells us – unfortunately, only on the book’s penultimate page – derives from the Jews’ original mission in the world. He quotes the late rabbi and thinker Arthur Hertzberg: “The claim to chosenness guarantees that Jews live unquiet lives. I say it is far better to be the chosen people, the goad and the irritant to much of humanity, than to live timidly and fearfully.”