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People love dead Jews : reports from a haunted present

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First edition.

"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." --

Available copies

  • 18 of 25 copies available at Westchester Library System.

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0 current holds with 25 total copies.

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Location Call Number /
Shelving Location
Barcode Status /
Due Date
Bedford Hills Free Library 909.049 H (Text)
New Nonfiction
31003151461644
Checked out
05/01/2024
Bronxville Public Library 909.049 H (Text)
Nonfiction
31004151825127
Available
-
Chappaqua Library 909.04924 HORN (Text)
Nonfiction
31005153450020
Available
-
Croton Free Library 909.04924 H (Text)
Nonfiction
31006151843919
Available
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Dobbs Ferry Public Library 909.049 H (Text)
Nonfiction
31007151426770
Available
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Eastchester Public Library 909.049 H (Text)
Nonfiction
31008152560906
Checked out
04/18/2024
Greenburgh Public Library 909.049 H (Text)
Nonfiction
31009154870046
Available
-
Greenburgh Public Library 909.049 H (Text)
Nonfiction
31009154951085
Available
-
Harrison Public Library 909.049 H (Text)
Nonfiction
31010300261957
Available
-
Hastings-on-Hudson Public Library 909.049 H (Text)
Nonfiction
31011151432499
Available
-
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