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Dara Horn

People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present Paperback – September 13, 2022

by Dara Horn (Author)

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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.

Now including a reading group guide.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

September 13, 2022
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
ISBN-10

1324035943
ISBN-13

978-1324035947
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is a beautiful book, and in its particular genre―nonfiction meditations on the murder of Jews, particularly in the Holocaust, and the place of the dead in the American imagination―it can have few rivals. In fact, I can’t think of any."
― Martin Peretz, Wall Street Journal

"This is one of the best books of essays about Jewish history and culture that I have read in years."
― David Herman, The Jewish Chronicle

"“So necessary and so disquieting…People Love Dead Jews is an outstanding book with a bold mission. It criticizes people, artworks, and public institutions that few others dare to challenge.”"
― Yaniv Iczkovits, New York Times Book Review

"Extremely engaging... Horn will make you think."
― Jeffrey Salkin, Washington Post

"Horn is clearly exhausted about thinking about dead Jews, and about antisemitism, and you can feel her emotion through the page. But she channels the emotion to weave together a large amount of stories ― from Russian Jews living in China to Daf Yomi ― and what results is a compelling series of essays."
― Emily Burack, Alma

"People Love Dead Jews is, of all things, a deeply entertaining book, from its whopper of a title on. Horn’s sarcasm is bracing, reminding us that the politics of Jewish memory often becomes an outrageous marketing of half-truths and outright lies... People Love Dead Jews reminds us that Jewishness is not a museum, a graveyard, or a heritage site but a lively ongoing conversation at a long table that stretches before and behind us. Come out of hiding, Horn urges us, it’s time to take part in Jewish life."
― David Mikics, Tablet

"Weaving together history, social science, and personal story, she asks readers to think critically about why we venerate stories and spaces that make the destruction of world Jewry a compelling narrative while also minimizing the current crisis of antisemitism... People Love Dead Jews offers no definitive solution to the paradox it unfolds. Horn leaves the reader with several interwoven explanations, each of which lead us to confront the dark reality that Jewish deaths make for a compelling educational narrative, while facing the antisemitism of the present demands a commitment to equality that the world remains unable to embrace."
― Jonathan Fass, Jewish Book Council

"How can a book filled with anger, a book about anti-Semitism and entitled People Love Dead Jews, be delectable at the same time? The novelist Dara Horn has done it, combining previously published pieces in a work that is far greater than the sum of its parts."
― Elliot Abrams, Commentary

"The questions and ideas raised by Horn in People Love Dead Jews are ― like the Yiddish stories she writes about ― endless and defiant of neat solutions. But there is comfort to be found, in the most Jewish ways, in her humour and clear-eyed critical thinking."
― Keren David, The Jewish Chronicle

"Barely concealed behind the breezy-sounding words ‘People Love,’ cannily reminiscent of a soap ad, is the implicit understanding that ‘people don’t love live Jews’ and even its complement, ‘people love Jews dead.’ In her latest masterpiece, Horn means them all, and more. The best-selling novelist, professor of Jewish literature, and devoted mother of four does not hesitate to confront this hypocrisy head-on... Horn diagnoses with astonishing accuracy the origins, symptoms, and intransigence of the spiritual cancer at the heart of modern culture."
― Juliana Geran Pilon, Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs

"Horn herself [is] sometimes a witness, at others providing insightful commentary full of anguish and rage. This is not an easy book to read. But wrestling with Horn’s ideas makes for a rich experience. In all, a profound lament."
― Ilene Cooper, Booklist

"Dara Horn proposes a disturbingly fresh reckoning with an ancient hatred, refusing all categories of victimhood and sentimentality. She offers a passionate display of the self-renewing vitality of Jewish belief and practice. Because antisemitism is a Christian problem more than a Jewish one, Christian readers need this book. It is urgently important."
― James Carroll, author of The Truth at the Heart of the Lie

"Dara Horn’s thoughtful, incisive essays constitute a searing investigation of modern-day antisemitism, in all its disguises and complications. No matter where Horn casts her acute critical eye―from the ruins of the Jewish community in Harbin, China, to the tragedy at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue―the reports she brings back are at once surprising and enlightening and necessary."
― Ruth Franklin, author of Shirley Jackson and A Thousand Darknesses

"Dara Horn has an uncommon mastery of the literary essay, and she applies it here with a relentless, even furious purpose. Horn makes well-worn debates―on Anne Frank and Hannah Arendt, for instance―newly provocative and urgent. Her best essays are by turns tragic and comic, and her magnificent mini biography of Varian Fry alone justifies paying the full hardcover price."
― Tom Reiss, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

"To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle, George Orwell told us. Dara Horn has engaged that struggle, and in People Love Dead Jews she explains why so many prefer the mythologized, dead Jewish victim to the living Jew next door. It’s gripping, and stimulating, and it’s the best collection of essays I have read in a long, long time."
― Mark Oppenheimer, author of Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood

About the Author

Dara Horn is the author of five novels and was one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. She has taught Jewish literature at Harvard, Sarah Lawrence College, and Yeshiva University. She lives in New Jersey with her family.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (September 13, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1324035943
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1324035947
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #18,600 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in History of Judaism
- #3 in Jewish Social Studies
- #66 in Discrimination & Racism

Customer Reviews:
4.6 1,777 ratings

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Dara Horn

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Dara Horn was born in New Jersey in 1977 and received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University in 2006, studying Hebrew and Yiddish. In 2007 she was chosen by Granta magazine as one of America’s “Best Young American Novelists.” Her first novel, In the Image, published by W.W. Norton when she was 25, received a 2003 National Jewish Book Award, the 2002 Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and the 2003 Reform Judaism Fiction Prize. Her second novel, The World to Come, published by W.W. Norton in 2006, received the 2006 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, the 2007 Harold U. Ribalow Prize, was selected as an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review and as one of the Best Books of 2006 by The San Francisco Chronicle, and has been translated into eleven languages. Her third novel, All Other Nights, published in 2009 by W.W. Norton, was selected as an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review and was one of Booklist’s 25 Best Books of the Decade. In 2012, her nonfiction e-book The Rescuer was published by Tablet magazine and became a Kindle bestseller. Her newest novel, A Guide for the Perplexed, is available in September 2013. She has taught courses in Jewish literature and Israeli history at Harvard, Sarah Lawrence College, and City University of New York, and has lectured at over two hundred universities and cultural institutions throughout North America and in Israel. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

1,777 global ratings

5 star		72%
4 star		18%
3 star		7%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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A difficult but important book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 16, 2023

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I was by turns saddened and outraged as I read through this book. I was astonished to read the history of Harbin, where my mother-in-law and her business partner grew up. I realized that I had read, many times, of the "context" provided around anti-semitic violence without articulating why it was so outrageous. I read a lot of books, and this is one of the rare books where I can say that my perspective on history and current affairs has been permanently shifted, like an image that suddenly moves from blurry to clear.

3 people found this helpful

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Antisemitism

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 20, 2021

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Intense, informative, and wide-ranging in scope, Dara Horn writes of the evils, dangers, and horrific reality of anti-Semitism using various examples in Jewish history. Whether in China, Russia, Europe, or the US, anti-Semitism thrives, post Holocaust. The author examines the essence and virulent hatred of anti-Semitism.
Referencing incidents from Simon of Trent in Italy, 1475, to the 1581 vicious murder of Roderigo Lopez under Elizabeth I, (whose predecessors conjured the Blood Libel upon the death of William of Norwich 1144, and in the next century, Edward I would participate in one of the first expulsions of Jews in Europe. Jews would not return to England until 1650 under Cromwell). From Shakespearean plays to Anne Frank’s book, to the burnings of Jewish Sacred Books, Horn shows a pattern of hatred and perceived wickedness of Jews.
Rendered from age-old tropes propagated by Christian works and beliefs over centuries led to the unmitigated murder of two million Jewish children in last century, and to extend to murders of Jews in the recent years. Further, in mirror image, Dara Horn reveals the absence of genuine respect for Jews while laying claim of adoration, sympathy or ridiculous expectations.
Furthermore, and much appreciated, is the mention of the new genre of Holocaust material produced by non-Jews (or even pretend Jews whose work is patently not Jewish).
In these popular works, non-Jews are often the saviors of the Jews, when in reality, the situation was very rare (though when, recognized and treasured). The Holocaust is not about racism. The Holocaust is not universal.
Through Jewish identity, the author relates differences in varied cultures and morals from behavior towards animals to political/religious oppression.
The author speaks specifically to the uniqueness of Judaism and to the uniqueness of anti-Semitism.
For Some Reviewers: What the book is Not about:
Donald Trump or other contemporary political leaders. The book Is about Obsession and Irrational Hatred. Equally, the book was not about the glory of rebuilding Jewish Heritage Sites to benefit for profit on the backs of Dead Jews but the abject loss of the Jews murdered or discarded.
Whom we must never forget are men like Varian Fry, the Righteous of the World.
Perhaps not much new for Jews in the know, however, the book, so cleverly written makes it so worth reading.
As succinctly stated by the author: Anti Semitism is a conspiracy of hate against Jews/Judaism.

24 people found this helpful

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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 19, 2023

Verified Purchase

I loved this book for the scholarly research and dynamic style the author brings to this subject. She tells us little known variants into the long tale.of aggression against the Jews. At the same time I marvel.that she can spend so.much energy studying the sad history of repeated attacks on her people. Human nature is basically awful.

5 people found this helpful

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Dawn O then A

Terrific Essays

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 3, 2023

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The title is apt but off putting for these entertaining, well-written and informative essays. I’ve bought extras to give as gifts.

2 people found this helpful

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Eric Maroney

Live a Large Jewish Life (but be prepared)

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 22, 2021

Verified Purchase

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.

114 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Kindle Customer

Not sure

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 17, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book is sort of all over the place. Is it about dead jews or anti-Semitism or Jewish traditions and beliefs or righteous gentiles....not sure. Some of it is really gripping, and I learned about Varian Fry of whom I'd never heard. But I'm still not sure what Dr. Horn was really trying to tell me. As I said, not sure.

2 people found this helpful

Mr. N. Hutchinson

Important Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 1, 2022

Verified Purchase

This is a really great book. Horn writes with a unique voice and draws the reader into story, history, religion, and current events like a weaver. She covers huge issues in creative ways and has a delightfully sarcastic streak to some of her points which aids the discussion rather than detracting. This is also an important book, about the recent rise in anti-Semitism and how we may all navigate it, stand against it and find hope in ancient paths.

One person found this helpful

Leprechaun

brilliant

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 8, 2022

Verified Purchase

I should probably stop highlighting lengthy quotes from this book, because if I go on, I'll have to highlight entire chapters, at least those dealing with the Jewish community of Harbin, and Varian Fry with everything around him.

I don't know how good Dara Horn's fiction novels are - the reviews are mixed. But this book is downright brilliant. She doesn't leave a stone unturned, and let me tell you, I had quite a few myths busted. Buy and read it, if you're interested in the subject, or get it at your local library.

One person found this helpful

Marcine

The devastating truths we need to hear

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 26, 2022

Verified Purchase

This book says it all and more. I have felt haunted my whole life. I even went through a phase where I was obsessed with photographing ruins and derelict buildings- truly haunted places. And now I have a far deeper understanding of why this and other obsessions that haunt me beyond the weight of being the daughter of a Holocaust survivor

One person found this helpful

Artur Wilczynski

I wish we loved each other this much.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 28, 2021

Verified Purchase

Found this book simultaneously uplifting and depressing. To look through the lens of how Jews should be perceived as living beings - as a living community - rather than a commodity of victims. Really enjoyed the narrative.

2 people found this helpful

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