Whether you’re Jewish or not, author and scholar Dara Horn’s new podcast Adventures with Dead Jews is compelling. As an accompaniment to her new nonfiction book People Love Dead Jews (which I’m currently in the midst of), Horn has written and produced this podcast that follows historical figures and movements as a way to celebrate vibrant Jewish culture, contributions, and accomplishments. Her thesis – that well-meaning non-Jews afford themselves a false absolution for atrocities (by visiting Holocaust museums or reading Anne Frank, for example) without appreciating the subtleties in those historical episodes – is a challenging notion that she supports well. Horn is usually a novelist, and she does a tremendous job using her story telling skills to narrative historical fact. I have enjoyed so much learning from these truth-is-stranger-than-life accounts.
