Dara Horn on a world that only teaches about ‘dead Jews’
Horn’s new essay collection ‘People Love Dead Jews’ looks at pervasive, modern-day antisemitismJ Street Falsely Charges Israel with Restricting Food, Medicine to Gaza
She describes this scene in People Love Dead Jews: Reports From a Haunted Present, her new essay collection that comes out on September 7. It’s her first nonfiction book, following five works of fiction that very much feature living Jews with interesting lives and story lines. The cheeky title is meant to be provocative, but it gets at Horn’s concern with how non-Jews around the world usually learn about Jews — not by interacting with them or learning about Jewish life, but by learning about “dead Jews,” through topics like the Holocaust or the Spanish Inquisition or Harbin’s story.
“I had mistaken the enormous public interest in past Jewish suffering for a sign of respect for living Jews,” Horn writes. “I was very wrong.”
Horn’s essays, several of which were previously published in other publications, address the dissonance between people’s fascination with dead Jews and rising levels of antisemitism in the U.S. (The FBI released figures yesterday showing that 58% of reported religiously motivated hate crimes in 2020 targeted Jews.) “Think about your social studies textbook when you’re in sixth grade or something. There’s something about the Israelites in the ancient history section. And then there’s a chapter about the Holocaust. That’s the only thing they say about Jews,” Horn told Jewish Insider in a recent interview.
One essay grapples with the near-universal reverence of Anne Frank while an employee at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam was told not to wear a yarmulke to work. Another makes sense of “Jewish heritage” sites worldwide and the perhaps slightly antisemitic reasons non-Jews maintain them. All try to get at uncomfortable truths about modern antisemitism.
After the Holocaust, Horn argued, the recent memory of the murder of six million Jews kept antisemitism in check. “The last few generations of non-Jews were sort of chagrined by the Holocaust, and that made antisemitism socially unacceptable,” said Horn, who is 44. “For the people who are in my generation and my parents’ generation, the times we grew up in were not normal. Now normal is returning.”
In conversation with JI, Horn talked about what Jewish liturgy has to say about dead Jews, how universalizing Jewish stories can erase the Jewish experience and why Tevye’s story still matters.
J Street, an advocacy organization that focuses on criticism of Israel, has falsely charged the Jewish state with restricting the import of food and medicine into the Gaza Strip.Squad Member Was Guest of Honor at Fundraiser Hosted By Pro-Erdogan Group
In an Aug. 26 email to its subscribers, J Street claimed that to maintain the status quo in Israeli-Palestinian relations “means punishing restrictions on medicine, food and goods to families in Gaza will continue.”
The email was signed by Jeremy Ben-Ami, the organization’s president.
In fact, there are no such restrictions on medicine or food. Other critics of Israel, at least, have been more honest about Gaza imports. “Currently, Israel allows the entrance of all civilian goods into the Gaza Strip, with the exception of a list of materials defined as ‘dual-use,’ which, according to Israel, can be used for military purposes,” notes the Israeli NGO Gisha.
Gisha, which normally advocates for Gaza residents and criticizes Israeli policies, has previously found it necessary to set the record straight about the very same accusation J Street and Ben-Ami leveled this month. After Ralph Nader claimed in 2012 that Israel limits food, medicine and water to Gaza, Gisha slammed the charge as unhelpful and inaccurate “hyperbole.”
“Israel does not restrict the import of food, water or fuel,” the NGO pointedly noted. “And while Nader’s article implies that Israel is responsible for the medication crisis in the Strip, the truth is that ongoing disputes regarding payment for medication between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are largely the cause of this.”
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) attended a fundraiser hosted last month by a Turkish-American advocacy group with close ties to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose members were on hand in 2017 when the Turkish leader's bodyguards beat peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C.
Two officials with the Turkish American National Steering Committee, a nonprofit cofounded by a relative of Erdogan’s, hosted the "meet and greet" fundraiser for Bowman at a restaurant in New Jersey on Aug. 7. Bowman, an acolyte of the "Squad," appeared at two of the committee’s events in May, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The committee has been accused of working as an influence group for the Erdogan regime. Founded in 2016, the Steering Committee has hosted Erdogan at multiple events in the United States and frequently holds protests supporting Erdogan-backed causes. It lobbied aggressively against the U.S. government’s recognition of the Ottoman Empire’s genocide of Armenians. Officials with the Steering Committee, including Erdogan relative Halil Mutlu, accompanied Erdogan’s delegation in May 2017 when his bodyguards attacked peaceful protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington.
"[The Steering Committee] operates as an Erdogan front, one of many astroturf groups advancing this dictator's anti-American agenda in Washington, D.C.," Aram Suren Hamparian, the executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, told the Free Beacon in June.
Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has been targeted by the Erdogan regime, said Bowman was "siding with the most dictatorial elements in Turkey" by appearing at Steering Committee events.