Dara Horn's Reading List

"Fear No Evil is an autobiography of Natan Sharansky, a Russian Jewish dissident who was imprisoned. The Soviet Union basically repressed all expressions of Judaism and forbade Jews from leaving for Israel . As a student in Moscow, exposure to Judaism led Natan to feel that lacking freedom of conscience is like a living death. He becomes a human rights activist and applies for a visa to emigrate to Israel. He is thrown in a gulag, tortured and held in solitary confinement for years. The campaign for his release, which his wife undertook, led to a worldwide campaign for the freedom of all Soviet Jews. Sharansky’s story is, in essence, about resistance to a coercive empire that punished people who didn’t conform. It echoes the story of the Maccabees. He describes being stripped of his menorah in the gulag and how he tricks a warden to light the candelabra with him. As he writes in his book, he was inspired by the Hanukkah story."

"This is a beautiful book, originally written in Hebrew by Ruby Namdar, an Israeli author based in the United States. It’s about a New York University professor of comparative culture called Andrew Cohen during the year leading up to 9/11 . The professor starts having weird visions which interfere with his romantic relationships and his relationships with his children. He thinks that he’s going insane. As the reader, we question his sanity too. Interspersed with his story are sections of texts written in the style of the Talmud, an ancient Jewish text. At first, these sections seem like random bits of religious gobbledygook. But if you read carefully, a second story emerges about a young priest at the centre of Judaism in ancient times. This second story parallels the professor’s story. The undertow of ancient times is pulling this 21st-century character back. The story is making the argument that the past never goes away. Even as we try to divorce ourselves from the past, our ancestors and aspects of our past keep a claim on us. The Ruined House is a warning that we ignore those claims at our peril. It’s an amazingly creative and beautifully written book. The Ruined House takes you back to the ancient temple that Hanukkah celebrates reclaiming. And it powerfully makes the point that we’re all connected to the history that haunts us."

"This is a very funny book about middle-aged men fighting with each other and fighting to maintain their self-esteem in pathetic ways. It’s very accessible. Sam Finkler, a popular thinker, media personality, and bestselling author, and his friend Julian Treslove reconvene with their former professor, an older Jewish immigrant from the Czech Republic. The book is about how Jews are expected to cooperate with contemporary anti-Semitism. To be accepted, Finkler renounces and demonizes the state of Israel. This book came out in 2010; only in more recent years has the UK started to grapple with the open anti-Semitism in its society. Hanukkah celebrates the end of the Seleucid Empire’s tyranny over Ancient Judea. At first, that regime just insisted that the Jews eliminate certain practices and conform to others. Many Jews went along. In my book I talk about the importance of Greek games at the time of the Hanukkah story; athletics in the nude were part of a public religion. Teenage Jewish boys were urged to participate. Many had their circumcisions reversed to conform. They mutilated themselves to ingratiate themselves. What Howard Jacobson does brilliantly in this book is look at how Jews are asked to participate in contemporary forms of anti-Semitism. That was why I included it on this list. It’s an amazing book about human dignity."

"I should say, Matti Friedman and I are friends. Pumpkinflowers is about his experience serving in the Israeli army at an outpost in a buffer zone on the Southern Lebanon border during the late 1990s. His unit was there to defend northern communities from Hezbollah fighters who were shooting missiles into Israel. It’s an astonishing memoir. Hanukkah is, in a way, a military holiday. So I wanted to include Pumpkinflowers because it’s about what goes on in the mind of a Jewish soldier at war. It’s a contemporary perspective on what it’s like for an Israeli soldier to face an openly jihadi enemy on his border, where moments of boredom alternate with moments of total terror. And Matti Friedman is a wonderful writer."

"Hanukkah is a holiday celebrating a miracle. The miracle of the oil is a fantastical story that the rabbinical tradition felt the need to tack onto this commemoration of a miraculous military victory. So, I wanted to include something that had a miraculous quality to it; The Frozen Rabbi certainly does. It’s a hilarious novel based on a fantastic premise. A Jewish teen in Tennessee, looking for hamburgers, discovers a 19th-century rabbi in his family’s deep freezer. Then there’s a power failure. The rabbi defrosts and it’s just hilarious. It becomes a story about the history of Jews in diaspora and about how the past haunts us. The Frozen Rabbi really captures that miraculous element of Hanukkah and the way all Jewish holidays tie modern people to an ancient past. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . We all have an equivalent of the rabbi in the freezer. We keep family heirlooms and religious traditions for old times’ sake, without considering how we engage with them. In the United States, the belief that the past is past is prevalent. But in Judaism, the idea that the past is always present and waiting to reemerge prevails. Probably my most recent novel, Eternal Life , which was inspired by some of the five books we just discussed. It’s about a woman born in Jerusalem 2000 years ago who makes a spiritual bargain to save her son but ends up trapped in eternal life because her vow was taken in the ancient temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. Also stuck in eternal life is an ex from her youth who stalks her through the centuries. It has a comic element to it, but it’s about how we’re all haunted by our pasts, which is also the subtitle of my current book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present ."