48 | JUNE 2 • 2022
ARTS&LIFE
BOOK REVIEW
E
rnest Hemingway
claimed that “a writer’s
job is to tell the truth.
”
The thought goes back a long
way. About 25 centuries earlier,
Confucius wrote that “Wisdom
depends on calling things by
their proper names.
” That
sounds easy, but somehow, peo-
ple get distracted. We do not see
an event that happens in front
of our eyes until a sharp-eyed
writer names it truly.
A sharp-eyed writer means
someone like Dara Horn.
Horn, a celebrated novelist
(who also earned a Ph.D. at
Harvard in Yiddish, Hebrew
and English literature), in these
essays focuses on the evasions
we use to avoid recognizing
antisemitism. The collection
earns its shocking title, People
Love Dead Jews. Each essay
focuses on different circum-
stances, but in all the circum-
stances, we have trouble notic-
ing hatred against Jews and find
uplifting lessons we can learn
from the murder of Jews.
Hate crimes happen with dis-
heartening frequency all around
the world, and journalists rou-
tinely write stories about the
latest violence against Blacks,
gays, Muslims, Asians, Jews and
other stigmatized groups.
When reporting about hate
crimes against Chasidic Jews,
Horn notes, journalists often
include a paragraph putting the
crime in context: They report
that ethnic tensions have grown
in this changing neighborhood
in reaction to an influx of Jews
… or words to that effect.
Horn notes that this con-
textualizing happens even
when the perpetrator of the
crime does not come from
the neighborhood, and even
when the neighborhood has
shown no other signs of ethnic
tension. Horn acidly translates
the terminology of “changing
neighborhood” and “influx of
Jews” as: “In other words, the
cause of bloodthirsty antisemit-
ic violence … Jews, living in a
place! Sometimes the Jews who
live in a place buy land on which
to live” (page 211. Italics are
Horn’s).
Of course, journalists do not
typically provide contextualiz-
ing paragraphs about attacks
against Blacks, gays, Muslims
or Asians. That would be blam-
ing the victim and gaslighting.
Contextualizing what Jews have
done to provoke hate crimes
deserves the name of antisem-
itism.
In the 20th century, thou-
sands of Jews turned to
American courts to petition
to have their names changed.
They explained they wanted
names that would not sound
foreign, that other Americans
could spell and pronounce.
With these more American-
sounding names, people could
more easily fit in to America.
The courts generally allowed
Epstein to become Evans, Levi
to become Lewis, Finkelman to
become Fields and so on. The
petitioners avoided mentioning
antisemitism, but Horn names
antisemitism as the driving
force that compelled name
changes. She notes with ironic
precision that some Americans
did not change their hard-to-
spell foreign-sounding names
and still achieved some mea-
sure of success with names like
Eisenhower and Roosevelt.
Horn notes that many of
the people who felt they had
to change their recognizably
Jewish names did not intend to
abandon their Jewish commit-
ments. They remained active in
the Jewish community.
Name changing was often
not a rejection of Judaism,
but rather a recognition of
the power of America’s antag-
onism toward Jews. Rather
than admit that ugliness about
A review of People Love Dead Jews:
Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn
Shocking Title,
Great Read
LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Dara
Horn
BRENDAN SCHULMAN, WIKIPEDIA