People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
- ISBN-10
- 0393531570
- ISBN-13
- 9780393531572
- Category
- Social Science
- Pages
- 272
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-09-07
- Publisher
- W. W. Norton & Company
- Author
- Dara Horn
Description
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.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
In the Image: A Novel
By Dara HornThe novel begins when he crosses paths with his granddaughter's friend, Leora, and continues by moving forward through her life and backward through his, revealing the unexpected links between his family's past and her family's future.
-
Jews and Power
By Ruth R. WisseJust as before, isolationists like Pat Buchanan accused President Bush of having been manipulated by Jews into joining their fight. Buchanan charged American Jews with “deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab ...
-
The World to Come: A Novel
By Dara HornThis work of art opens a door through which we discover his family's startling history—from an orphanage in Soviet Russia where Chagall taught to suburban New Jersey and the jungles of Vietnam.
-
Antisemitism in America
By Leonard DinnersteinThis book, however, reveals in disturbing detail the resilience, and vehemence, of this ugly prejudice. Penetrating, authoritative, and frequently alarming, this is the definitive account of a plague that refuses to go away.
-
To Repair a Broken World: The Life of Henrietta Szold, Founder of Hadassah
By Dvora HacohenA passionate Zionist, Szold was troubled by the JewishÐArab conflict in Palestine, to which she sought a peaceful and equitable solution for all. Noted Israeli historian Dvora Hacohen captures the dramatic life of this remarkable woman.
-
The Last Consolation Vanished: The Testimony of a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz
By Zalmen GradowskiZalmen Gradowski was in the Sonderkommando (special squad) at Auschwitz, a Jewish prisoner given the unthinkable task of ushering Jewish deportees into the gas chambers, removing their bodies, salvaging any valuables, transporting their ...
-
Jews Don’t Count
By David BaddielNorth American Edition of the UK Bestseller How identity politics failed one particular identity. ‘a must read and if you think YOU don’t need to read it, that’s just the clue to know you do.’ SARAH SILVERMAN ‘This is a brave and ...
-
Why the Jews?: The Need to Scapegoat
By Marek HalterMarek Halter, a Jew himself, asks, "Why always the Jews?" This hard-hitting essay examines all the false trials of Jews—religious or otherwise—during troubled periods throughout the world's history.
-
How to Fight Anti-Semitism
By Bari WeissThis book is Weiss’s answer. Like many, Weiss long believed this country could escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism.
-
Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism
By Dennis Prager, Joseph TelushkinThis postmillennial edition of Why the Jews? offers new insights and unparalleled perspectives on some of the most recent, pressing developments in the contemporary world, including: • The replicating of Nazi antisemitism in the Arab ...