Candlelighting Time

Author Dara Horn On Jewish Literature

Read Any Good (Jewish) Books Lately?

September 2009

By Simone Ellin

But wait! What is a Jewish book? Who is a Jewish author? Do such categories even exist? These are questions that may seem to have obvious answers, yet they are sources of controversy among writers and literary critics.

Recently, I spoke with award-winning author Dara Horn, to gain her perspective on this topic. Horn’s newest novel, “All Other Nights,” was published in April, 2009. It’s the story of a Jewish soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Like her earlier, highly acclaimed and award-winning novels, “In the Image” (2002) and “A World to Come” (2006), “All Other Nights” was received with overwhelming accolades and was chosen as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice.

Unlike many of her literary contemporaries, 32-year-old Horn does not hesitate to call herself a “Jewish writer,” or to describe her books as “Jewish literature.” She believes that her own Jewish identity is central to her work. Her education (Horn has a doctorate in Hebrew and Yiddish language) plays a major role as well. In fact, Horn points out that in Yiddish, the words for “Yiddish” and “Jewish” are one and the same. For Horn, it seems, the Hebrew and Yiddish languages are inseparable from the Jewish religion.

Horn seems mildly amused, and also somewhat annoyed, about writers’ and literary critics’ preoccupation with these questions. “I joke that what makes one a Jewish writer is how often one is asked to sit on a panel with other writers when these questions are discussed,” she says.

Becoming serious again, Horn explains, “These discussions are tedious, not meaningful to me. What’s important in looking at books is how you take those themes from literature and religion and use them in your life — how they are expandable beyond Torah.”

Horn writes about diverse topics, but weaves Judaism into all of her novels. Her ideas come from many different places and times. The writer explains that the idea for “All Other Nights” began to percolate shortly after the release of her first novel, “In the Image.”

“I was speaking in New Orleans and was taking a walk around a neighborhood when I saw an old Jewish cemetery. It dated from the late 1700s to early 1800s. I hadn’t known that there was such an old Jewish community in New Orleans. As it turned out, during those years, New Orleans had the second largest Jewish population in America,” she says.

Her interest in the Jewish community of New Orleans, coupled with her fascination with the Civil War, led to the penning of “All Other Nights,” a historical fiction novel about Jewish spies during the Civil War.

“I think I was drawn to the subject of the Civil War,” says Horn, “in part because today the country is so polarized. It’s impossible to have a conversation with someone nowadays without knowing their political views. The idea of the ‘red states’ and the ‘blue states’ we talk about now is similar to the Confederacy and the Union in the Civil War. In both cases people have competing ideals. That divide exists in the Jewish community too.”

But Jewish characters are not at the crux of what Horn says make her books Jewish. Once again, the writer’s fascination with language is crucial to understanding what’s Jewish about the novels.

“My books are Jewish because, although I write in English, I bring resonances and references from the Hebrew Bible into the stories. Our country has one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, but we don’t use a Hebrew language. I try to create a Jewish language in English,” she says.

“For instance, the main character in “All Other Nights” is named Jacob and he is modeled after Jacob in the book of Genesis,” she explains. “He begins the story as a moral degenerate and ends the book as a worthy father. The book begins with a seder in New York. A year later when Jacob attends a seder with relatives in New Orleans, an aunt at the seder has four sons in the Confederate army. That’s subtle; not everyone would notice the symbolism of the four sons from the Passover Hagaddah. In my first novel there is a whole chapter told in Biblical verse from the book of Job.”

Despite the fundamental Jewishness of Horn’s novels, the writer is surprised at how popular her books are with non-Jewish readers. “Actually I have a lot of religious Christian readers. The themes in my books are universal. Both religion and literature at their best are instruments of empathy—appreciating what someone is going through. My books are published in 11 languages and not all of those countries have a lot of Jewish readers,” notes Horn.

Some people assume that all Jewish literature is Holocaust literature. Horn couldn’t disagree more. “I am adamantly opposed to that view. It says that what’s most interesting about Jewish life is that it ended. Why are we so well educated about how these people died, rather than how they lived?”

Dara Horn will speak about her new novel, “All Other Nights,” at Towson University on Oct. 20 at 4 p.m. The lecture is free. For information, contact Evelyn Avery at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call 410-704-2865.

What Are You Reading?

Local readers speak out on whether Jewish characters or subjects are important to them.

Rafi Rone, 38, of Pikesville finds that sometimes, but not always, he gravitates toward literature by Jewish authors and Jewish themes. Rone is partial to the Daniel Silva series featuring protagonist Gabriel Allon, a spy and assassin for the Israeli Secret Service. He also likes reading the works of Tom Friedman.

On the other hand, as Rone points out, “One of my favorite writers is John Irving and none of his characters are Jewish. It’s a great way to learn about the culture of non-Jewish Northeastern Americans.”

Currently, Rone is reading “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Rone dislikes when too much detail is provided to educate a reader about Jewish customs, as in the mystery novels of Faye Kellerman. “I feel infantalized by all the Jewish content. I already know about the customs of observant Jews.” Rone prefers the work of Kellerman’s husband, Jonathon Kellerman, whose books have nothing to do with Judaism. Like Dara Horn, Rone doesn’t believe that Jewish literature is the same as Holocaust literature. “Holocaust is its own genre,” he says.

While Missy Sachs-Kohen, a 41-year-old school social worker from Sudbrook Park, doesn’t choose books based on their Jewish content or characters, she finds she is more likely to relate to Jewish characters. Jewish literature, as she sees it, is a genre where there are Jewish characters and where their Jewishness determines the storyline.

Recently, Sachs-Kohen says she read a book about some nuns who left their order.” It was interesting but I couldn’t quite get into it the way a Catholic reader might,” she explains.

Currently, Sachs-Kohen is reading a nonfiction book called the “The Girls From Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty Year Friendship” by Jeffrey Zaslow. “It’s about a group of women from Ames, Iowa, who have stayed friends for forty years,” she says. “One woman is Jewish and it makes a difference because she’s the only Jew in the group and one of the few Jews in Ames.”

Sachs-Kohen also enjoys Jennifer Weiner’s novels, including the 2008 book, “Certain Girls.” At the center of the novel is a family’s experience planning a bat mitzvah for their daughter.

She also doesn’t equate Jewish literature with Holocaust literature. In fact, she says, “I won’t read Holocaust literature now. I’ve read a lot of it in the past and it’s too difficult for me now.”

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