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