**The Book**
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn

This 2021 book is exploring the exploitation of Jewish history, particularly focusing on the fascination with Jewish deaths rather than respecting the lives and culture of the living Jewish community.

**How this works**

* We read a 20-40 pages a week (or however the chapters fall).
* Come to the discussion with your questions and observations and we'll start from there.
* This is pretty low-key, expect to learn something and to have fun.
* Join us for one, a few or all chapters.

**Calendar of Chapters**
October 19

* Chapter 1 - Everyone's (Second) Favorite Dead Jew 1

October 26

* Chapter 2 - Frozen Jews 15

November 2

* Chapter 3 - Dead American Jews, Part One 48
* Chapter 4 - Executed Jews 53

November 9

* Chapter 5 - Fictional Dead Jews 72
* Chapter 6 - Legends of Dead Jews 88
* Chapter 7 - Dead American Jews, Part Two 104

November 16

* Chapter 8 - On Rescuing Jews and Others 108 - 143

November 23

* Chapter 8 - On Rescuing Jews and Others 143 - 166

November 30

* Chapter 9 - Dead Jews of the Desert 167

December 7

* Chapter 10 - Blockbuster Dead Jews 182
* Chapter 11 - Commuting with Shylock 193

December 14

* Chapter 12 - Dead American Jews, Part Three: Turning the Page 209

**About the book**
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.

Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Con­tem­porary Jewish Life and Prac­tice

Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year

Mensa / San Francisco Region

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Every week on Saturday until December 14, 2024

Online Book Discussion | One Chapter at a Time | Saturdays at 10am PST

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Online Book Discussion | One Chapter at a Time | Saturdays at 10am PST

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