Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s revelation that he was asked by a member of Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential team vetting him whether he had ever been an Israeli agent has reopened a wound for many American Jews — one that never fully healed.

Harris ultimately chose Tim Walz over Shapiro amid an ugly campaign mounted by the far left that dubbed Shapiro “Genocide Josh,” despite his positions on Israel being nearly indistinguishable from Walz’s. That campaign highlighted how the far left had successfully turned any personal ties to Israel into a disqualifier.

More disquietingly, the anti-Shapiro campaign subjected American Jews to antisemitic accusations of dual loyalty. Nearly a quarter century after Joe Lieberman became the first Jewish candidate on a major party ticket, the anti-Shapiro campaign raised the specter of Jewish identity posing an insurmountable electoral hurdle.

The Shapiro episode appears to confirm the worst of these fears. The fact that Walz was asked whether he had ever been a Chinese agent in light of his travels to China, or that every federal security background check seeks to establish whether any applicant has loyalty to a foreign power, does not ameliorate many American Jews’ concerns. Questioning whether Jews can be loyal citizens is one of the defining features of classical antisemitism, and it is difficult to disentangle the Shapiro controversy from the myriad signs of antisemitism on the rise in the U.S.

But as upsetting as Shapiro’s vetting experience is, it would be the wrong takeaway to conclude that antisemitism is now so rampant that no Jew could ascend to one of the highest offices in the land. The less worrisome, but more complicated, problem is this: what........

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