Book #109 |
Book: People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present | Author: Dara Horn | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Audiobook |
Pages: 237 | Duration: 11/11/25 – 11/14/25 (4 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: nonfiction, Jewish, history, Judaism, religion, essays, politics, Holocaust | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Challenging contemplation of why there’s unremitting fascination with Jewish deaths. 🖌6-word review: Important. Requires vulnerability, rigorous intellectual investment. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “When a young employee at the Anne Frank House tried to wear his yarmulke to work, his employers told him to hide it under a baseball cap. The museum’s goal was “neutrality,” one spokesperson explained to the British newspaper Daily Mail, and a live Jew in a yarmulke might “interfere” with the museum’s “independent position.” The museum finally relented after deliberating for 4 months, which seems like a rather long time for the Anne Frank House to ponder whether it was a good idea to force a Jew into hiding.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: Many Jewish cultural and religious words | |||
| Description:* 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.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: A friend of mine (who, FWIW, is not Jewish) recommended this book to me, and boy am I glad she did. It’s incredibly educational and thought-provoking in terms of getting you to take a look at your own beliefs (and prejudices, many not obvious) about Judaism and the Holocaust. For one thing, I’ll stop telling the (not true) story that my Portuguese grandparents dropped the “s” off the end of our last name at Ellis Island when they emigrated here from The Azores. This book also helped me understand what it is about Holocaust novels that just doesn’t sit right with me — enough that I’m not interested in reading any more of them. I recommend this book highly and unequivocally. This is a comprehensive review of the book by Katherine E. Aron-Beller of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. | |||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.
