The Lie at the Center of Antisemitism, with Dara Horn

Conversations with Coleman

In a live conversation at the 92nd Street Y, novelist and scholar Dara Horn discusses her provocative new book, The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living. She argues that

Key takeaways

• Antisemitism is not random bigotry but a consistent lie that Jews are destroying what society values most.
• Jewish civilization has been an anti-tyrannical counterculture for 3,000 years, rooted in the Exodus and rabbinic tradition of dissent.

Main topics

• The nature of antisemitism as a recurring lie
• Jewish countercultural identity and historical resistance to tyranny

Notable quotes

Jewish civilization has been this countercultural movement since ancient times. And it's more than just that—it's an anti-tyrannical movement.

Conclusion

Horn concludes that the enduring strength of Jewish identity lies not in victimhood but

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. Today's podcast is a live recording of my recent interview with Dara Horn. Dara is an American novelist, essayist, and scholar of Jewish literature. She holds a doctorate in comparative literature from Harvard University and is the author of several acclaimed books, including People Love Dead Jews. Her new book is called The Final Solution to the Jewish Question. And that is the topic of our conversation today. We talk about the problem of antisemitism in America, especially since October 7th. We talk about why America has been different historically from Europe with respect to antisemitism. We talk about how antisemitism differs on the political left and the political right. We talk about Thomas Sowell's essay entitled, Are Jews Generic? And much more. So without further ado, Dara Horn. Speaker 2 (1:16) Dara Horn, it's great to be with you. Speaker 1 (1:18) Coleman, great to be with you, and thank you to everyone at UJA and 92Y for making this happen. Speaker 2 (1:24) Absolutely, thank you so much. One more round of applause for our organizers. Speaker 1 (1:27) Your Speaker 2 (1:33) new book is very meekly and not at all provocatively titled Speaker 1 (1:38) The Speaker 2 (1:39) Final Solution to the Jewish Problem. You begin the book by talking about... Keep your pitchforks where they are, folks. You begin the book by talking about one of my favorite Dr. Seuss stories as a kid, which was the Lorax. The Lorax was this little creature that would come out and say, I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees. And somehow he didn't seem to prevent all that much harm from happening. And you say that you have begun to feel like the anti-Semitism Lorax. Speaker 1 (2:17) Yes. Speaker 2 (2:18) What do you mean by that? Speaker 1 (2:20) Well, so this was a name that one of my sisters gave to me because after my last book with the equally annoying title, or equally wonderful title, People Love Dead Jews, these are both great books to read on the beach, by the way, because then no one will sit near you on the beach. Even Speaker 2 (2:38) better on the subway. Speaker 1 (2:39) Yes, even better. Yes, exactly. Anytime you want to clear the space, this is the book to read, either of these. After that book came out, it was like this floodgate opened and I suddenly felt like I was being approached by what felt like every Jew in America asking for help. Just telling me their own personal horror stories about anti-Semitism. And then one of my sisters made this joke, Dara, you've become the anti-Semitism war axe. I'm sitting here yelling, I speak for the Jews. And then, you know, zero effect, right? They're mowing the forest down. I just, and then what happened though was after October 7th in 2023, this became institutionalized. Like it wasn't just individual readers approaching me, but institutions. And the first one of these was, I was asked to participate in this. ill-fated anti-Semitism advisory group for the now former president of Harvard, who you may have heard did not take a lot of our advice. In fact, it went so badly that I became a witness in the congressional investigation. That was a wonderful experience. And what I realized was that, and then that was the beginning of many different institutions and sectors approaching me about this problem. You know, people from the tech world who came to me about what's called data poisoning on various platforms that were feeding AI models. I mean, this was like, I felt like I was so out of my depth. And ultimately what ended up happening was people kept saying to me, so what's your solution to this problem? And my totally tasteless response was... Do you really want me to give you the final solution to the Jewish question? Because I wasn't prepared to give this to you. But I've spent the last several years thinking about this, and it occurred to me that actually there's a lot of things that we could be doing differently. And so in this book, I really take people into how we got into this dumpster fire that we're now living in and how we can potentially get out of it. Speaker 2 (4:40) So I want to read a quote from the book. And in the book, a key question you address is what actually is anti-Semitism and what isn't it? Because a word like bigotry is an umbrella term. It captures a lot of distinct psychological and social phenomena that can be confused. And presumably, if we're going to get a handle on anti-Semitism as a society, we should start by interrogating. what it is, right? and what it is about Jewish culture that has run into this problem in so many different places. So here's a quote from your book. Jewish culture is a counterculture that weaves its way through the history of the world, influencing and being influenced by majority cultures, but also directly challenging those majority cultures, and within that challenge, many possibilities emerge. Explain that to me. Speaker 1 (5:41) So, I was, as I was struggling to sort of find ways to address this problem, I was looking at, as you say, like bigotry, the way that we are often taught to combat bigotry in this country is, you know, people are often given this message, which is a very well-intended message, where, you know, educators will say, see this group of people over here who you might be prejudiced against? You shouldn't hate those people because they're just like everyone else. They're just like you and me, they're just like everyone else. And what I realized is the problem with this idea is that Jews spent 3,000 years not being like everyone else. Uncoolness is Judaism's brand. This goes back 3,000 years to the ancient Near East. There's a Marvel Cinematic Universe of sexy deities. The Jews are sitting in the corner with their bossy, unsexy, invisible god. Jews have never been cool. And so what I realized is that this idea that you shouldn't hate people because they're just like you and me, they're just like everyone else, this is the acid test of a pluralistic society. So in that quote that you read where I say, you know, Jewish culture is this counterculture that weaves its way through the history of the West, ultimately this is sort of bringing me to this idea that I come to in this book, which is that I think that we often have this belief that there's, you know, this positive story of Jewish civilization, and then there's this negative story about anti-Semitism, and there's no connection between them. because the only people who are proposing connections between them are deranged bigots. So you don't want to be in that category. But I started thinking that actually these two stories are not two different stories. They are one story. And it comes from the fact that Jewish civilization has been this countercultural movement since ancient times. And this really goes back to the ancient world where many ancient societies worshipped many gods. And often one of those gods was the dictator, right? I mean, we know this about ancient Egypt. We know this about ancient Rome, that the emperor, the pharaohs were worshipped as gods. So when the Jews say that they don't bow to other gods, ultimately what they're saying is that they don't bow to tyrants. Speaker 1 (7:56) And this turns Jewish civilization into not just a counterculture, but an anti-tyrannical movement since ancient times. And to me, that is what connects it to the history of anti-Semitism since ancient times, because when you have an anti-tyrannical movement, it pisses off tyrants. And it's more than just that, too, because this is also, it's an anti-tyrannical movement. It's also a movement that's based on this story of freedom. This is a foundational legend in Judaism or the story of the Exodus that suggests that social order can be changed. It's based on an idea that freedom requires responsibility, that you have this set of laws that even kings are responsible to follow. I mean, these are radical, radical ideas in the ancient world. And then the rabbinic tradition, which is about... civil discourse and dissent, that you're not just reading the Bible literally, but that every person is participating in this interpretive process. When I say that this leaves openings for possibilities, ultimately the presence of this civilization and the endurance of this civilization becomes like an acid test for a pluralistic society. Can your society accept debate and dissent? Is this a society where you're not going to say that the only way you're not going to hate people is if they're just like everyone else? Speaker 2 (9:20) Yeah. I'm a huge fan of Walter Russell Mead's book, The Ark of the Covenant, which will be familiar to many people in the audience. I had him on my podcast as well. Part of the argument he makes there is that it's not an accident that America has been, in my... estimation the best country ever to exist and has also been uncommonly, unusually nice to its Jewish population. George Washington's famous letter saying not only are we gonna quote unquote tolerate you, actually tolerance is not even the proper concept here because you are as American as anyone else. Which was, it was as in you, it was very unusual in the 18th century. Speaker 2 (10:13) But really, it's not an accident because the same things that made America great made it quote unquote tolerant of minorities and indeed welcoming of religious minorities, in particular Jews. So this idea that it can be an acid, that Jews are an acid test for how tyrannical a society is has a lot of foundation in someone like Walter Russell Mead's thinking. I'm curious what you think of other theories of antisemitism. So for instance, Thomas Sowell, a writer I greatly admire, he has an essay, it's kind of, well, you're no stranger to provocative titles, so I'm sure you won't judge him, but the title is Are Jews Generic? By which he means, is antisemitism actually a special case of a universal human bigotry and irrationality? and it goes like this. In many societies, there are market-dominant minorities. What does that mean? It means a certain minority group becomes dominant in certain professions for totally meritocratic, normal reasons, like there's no injustices happening. But if you specialize in certain professions that are widely misunderstood, such as being a merchant, or rather than a manufacturer, all around the world, not even to do with Judaism, quite often, majority populations will come to hate those people for terrible reasons, expel those people, and it's happened with Indians in East Africa, it's happened with Chinese in Asia, and perhaps antisemitism is just one particular case of this generic sad phenomenon, with the Jews being the most salient example in the West. What do you think of that thesis? Speaker 1 (12:14) I think it's an interesting idea. What I want to point out is that Jews being in that position in many societies in the West, is actually also something that comes from Jewish civilization. I know Sol is an economist. I'm so out of my depth, I feel like Econ 101 was the last time I ever thought about anything about economics. But there's a book that I cite in my book that's a book titled The Chosen Few. It came out about 10 or 15 years ago by two economic historians, Maristella Bottasini and Zvi Ekstein. they make a really intriguing argument in that book where they look at, you know, there's often, so that's one explanation you have, well, that's sort of the negative explanation for why are Jews, you know, commonly persecuted in a lot of societies, and it's an economic explanation. They're answering a slightly different question, which is why have Jewish minorities often thrived in different societies? Speaker 1 (13:13) you know, often an explanation for that is, oh, Jews weren't allowed to own land in various societies, and so therefore they went into, you know, mercantile trades or finance or something like this. Speaker 2 (13:23) And Speaker 1 (13:24) they point out that actually that the restrictions on Jews' economic activity actually comes much later in history, like it's post-Renaissance in a lot of cases. And so that is not the explanation. And their explanation is something that is inherent in Jewish civilization, which is literacy. Because they point out that there's, you know, in the ancient world, like there's this, as many people in here may know, there's this rupture in Jewish culture at the time of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, where you have this shift from this being really a land-based agrarian society where what made you Jewish was that you were making the pilgrimage to the temple three times a year, you were tithing your produce, these kinds of things. And then after that destruction of that cultural center, you have a shift toward the emphasis and what makes you Jewish is Torah study, your engagement with Torah. So with that shift, suddenly that imposes a requirement on members of the community, which is, to us, sounds very basic, that you have to teach your kids how to read. But in the ancient world, that was extremely uncommon. And they make the point that what that did was that... that put Jews, as one of the very few people in various communities that were literate, that put Jews in a position to really have these roles in an evolving urban economy. And this is the kind of book where they bring a lot of charts and graphs to, and they collect all these census data from historical periods. Speaker 2 (14:56) But to his larger point about, Speaker 1 (15:00) are Jews generic, as he puts it, right, in another wonderful title, which I love. I actually, you know, I think that there's this. To me, what's interesting about antisemitism is less that it's about scapegoating a minority, which, yes, this is a very common thing. I mean, you know, everybody has, you know, every group of humans has probably been through this experience, you know, at some point in their history. To me, what I think is interesting about antisemitism, what makes it unusual, is mostly just that it's old. And the reason it's old is because there aren't a whole