Now, we see rising rates of anti-Semitic attacks and the spreading of anti-Semitic beliefs in Europe and the United States. Then, the memorialization of the Shoah, noble on its face, allowed non-Jews to ignore inconveniently living Jews as survivors in Europe or pioneers in Israel. Then, of course, the cultural, social, and scientific Darwinism of 19 th century Progress reprised the old hatreds for the modern world, and we made our way on the tracks of Progress into the execution trenches of the Eastern Front and the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz. Those in the supposedly more tolerant age of modernity managed sometimes to see Jews as human but still denied their religious and civilizational particularity, as in Revolutionary France. In medieval Europe, most Christians preferred the “rejectors of Christ” to be killed in pogroms, blood-libel mobs, and crusades than to live alongside them. In ancient times, Greece and Rome suppressed Jewish life and lives for the monotheism that repudiated their polytheist worldview. Throughout history, people have found it easier to deal with Jews when they are dead rather than alive. It is a book that shreds modern piety and sophistry in equal measure.” “ All of this is captured in twelve essays in novelist Dara Horn’s powerful and coruscating book on why people still love dead Jews over living Jews.
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