- Summary
- 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.
- Format
- Book
- Author/Creator
- Horn, Dara, 1977- author.
- Published
- New York, NY : W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., [2021]
©2021
- Edition
- First edition
- Contents
-
Introduction: In the haunted present
Everyone's (second) favorite dead Jew
Frozen Jews
Dead American Jews, part one
Executed Jews
Fictional dead Jews
Legends of dead Jews
Dead American Jews, part two
On rescuing Jews and others
Dead Jews of the desert
Blockbuster dead Jews
Communing with Shylock
Dead American Jews, part three: turning the page.
- Notes
-
Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-237).
Introduction: In the haunted present -- Everyone's (second) favorite dead Jew -- Frozen Jews -- Dead American Jews, part one -- Executed Jews -- Fictional dead Jews -- Legends of dead Jews -- Dead American Jews, part two -- On rescuing Jews and others -- Dead Jews of the desert -- Blockbuster dead Jews -- Communing with Shylock -- Dead American Jews, part three: turning the page.
