People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present *[Book]
Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture―and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks―Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present. Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life―trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study―to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past―making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity. Read more
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Why Must Read People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present?
This is a very difficult book to review. Dara Horn gets right at the heart of the conundrums, fears, and anxieties of Jews in America in the age of Trump and post-Trump. And why not? The rise of anti-Antisemitism and the violence it has spawned is deeply concerning. American sense looming danger. As a Jew, it is nearly impossible to read Horn’s book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present, without the baggage we haul along as the topics she explores hit right at an existential Jewish dichotomy: we are not in existential danger, the place we live is safe or we are in existential danger (or soon will be) and the place we live is dangerous (or soon will be). Shaul Magid has written, as of this moment, one of the few largely negative reviews of this book. He thinks that seeing Jewish history as a series of catastrophes warps our sense of Jewish history. As a Jew influenced by Bratslav, I understand his concerns; the Jewish life we live should be approached b’simcha, with joy. Otherwise, Judaism becomes a nihilistic entity, enshrining victim-hood, and instilling a dangerous sense of entitlement to our own sufferings (after all, many other peoples have suffered catastrophes). Why can't we Jews just deal if it? I think we fail to because Horn’s sense of Jewish history, across a certain spectrum, is just as correct as Magid’s. It is prudent, even wise, to enjoy our lives as Jews to the hilt, while at the same time realizing that our history has given us ample reason to be afraid of certain trends, and plan to protect ourselves. There is nothing inherently contradictory in holding these two views at once. This is not an all or nothing proposition. After all, this is how we approach life. Every day we wake up, and we know, at least in the back of our mind, that something terrible might happen today. This may be our last day in a job, a marriage, or as living beings. But we get out of our beds and we move on and live with as much joy as possible. We live the most we can in the face of existential uncertainty; but we also plan for the worst.
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