Being Jewish with Jonah Platt

Ep_29_Literary Antisemitism_ Dara Horn on Jew Hate in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice & Roald Dahl’s Work
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Dara Horn: [00:00:00] The state of Israel is not a response to the Holocaust.

Jonah Platt: You break down how this is a wildly grotesque caricature of a Jew.

Dara Horn: It's the thing I'm always writing about.

Jonah Platt: You'll never be able to read Roll Doll the same way again.

Dara Horn: This is your Queen Esther moment where you can stand up against hatred.

Jonah Platt: Welcome back for part two of my fantastic, super sized conversation with the one and only Dara Horn.

If you haven't listened to part one yet, hit pause on this. Jump back to last week, get yourself caught up, and then rejoin us. In the meantime, we're gonna get started. Dara, one more big concept from people of dead Jews that I wanna talk about is Merchant of Venice, which you get into, and as an actor and English major, uh, this really hit home for me.

Basically, you, you break down how this is a wildly antisemitic. Grotesque caricature of a Jew with no redeeming qualities, who, whose downfall is celebrated, whose daughter abandons her Judaism to marry a Christian and run [00:01:00] away. And it's so widely performed, so widely regarded, entirely unquestioned. Like why is your book the first time I, I'm hearing anybody talk about this,

Dara Horn: you know, look in the book I write about, um.

Listening to A BBC production of this in the car with my then 10-year-old son. Yeah. Which was this sort of amazing thing where I realized like how much gaslighting there is around that play. Right. How you're supposed to regard it as this like, you know, amazing moment of humanity because Shylock has this monologue that's like, I am a Jew, hath not a Jew.

Eyes, organs, dimensions. Right. You know, if you prick us, do we, not we. And it's like, look, this is this amazing show of this. Person's humanity and my 10-year-old son. Yeah. I love this. You know, got to the, I mean, like, we're listening to this play and it's just like, you know, horror show, anti-Semitic caricatures and stereotypes that this 10-year-old can't miss.

Right. Um, you know, from,

Jonah Platt: from, as you say, Shakespeare who likely had never met a June in his life.

Dara Horn: Of course. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, although, you know, look, there was, um, this, you know, anti-Semitic scandal about this, [00:02:00] this doctor. Right. He pulled, collected

Jonah Platt: it from the news.

Dara Horn: Yes. Right. I mean, because there was a converted Portuguese Jewish doctor who was the physician to Queen Elizabeth the first, and he was accused of poisoning her, and he was executed.

I like crowds shouting, hang the Jew. Right. And that was the big news story, like right before Shakespeare wrote this play. Hmm. So, gee, I remember listening in the car with my 10-year-old son to this, you know that monologue? Yeah. And he says to me, he's like, wait, you fell for that? And I was like, what do you mean?

And he says. This is the evil super villain monologue that every evil super villain does, like in every superhero movie. You know, like, oh, I've had a rough life and if you or me you'd do the same thing and Right. You know, that's why I'm gonna go kill Batman muha. Ha ha ha. Right. Uhhuh. He's like, Uhhuh.

Jonah Platt: He got it.

Dara Horn: Oh yeah. It was obvious to his 10-year-old

Jonah Platt: reading about Merchant of Venice. And the way you speak about it made me think of Role Dahl, who, for those of you who don't know, was a. Vicious anti-Semite. Oh, proud of it too. Like, yeah, very outspoken. Mm-hmm. Saying, you know, one of his quotes is, [00:03:00] I'm, I'm not just anti-Israel, I'm an anti-Semite.

Oh yeah. I mean,

Dara Horn: he, I mean, he was like, you know, you know, Hitler didn't pick on the Jews for no reason, for no reason. Right. He was like, you know, it's not nothing subtle. Right. Yeah.

Jonah Platt: The, the Jew like inherently provokes animosity or something for like really gross stuff. And, you know, to quote, uh, Michael Solomonov, who he had on this show once.

Where's the fucking outrage? Do you think it comes from just as we were saying earlier, like a total lack of awareness and ignorance? Or is there some sort of nefarious underneath this?

Dara Horn: I wrote a piece about Rol Dolf for a few years ago for Jewish review of books. Um, I wrote it when there was a yet another movie production of the book.

The Witches mm-hmm. That came out. The Witches is this book about, you know, that it's basically saying that there's this like group of what appear to be women. Who are actually witches, who are trying to eat children. It's like, you know, they have big noses and you know, they are, they're bald and they wear wigs.

Mm. Which is like, you know, that's actually a practice in [00:04:00] some Hasidic communities where women's, you know, women cover their hair and then there's like this like devilish thing where, you know, they have hooves and instead of feet, right. I mean, it's like, it goes straight to this, you know, they could smell children and they're hunting you down.

It gets worse than that though. Then they, they print their own money. I could not make this up. They print their own money. Then there's like the grand high Witch holds these like meetings of the grand high witches of all the world, and it's like, it's straight outta the protocols of the elders of Zion.

And then you meet the Grand high Witch. I could not make this up. She has a Yiddish accent

Jonah Platt: in In the book.

Dara Horn: In the book. In the book,

Jonah Platt: huh?

Dara Horn: Yeah. She has a Yiddish accent. She's printing her own money and they're talking about how they wanna kill children.

Jonah Platt: Right.

Dara Horn: This is like a, like a straight up medieval blood wval.

Yeah. And I'm just like reading this to like, you know, at the time, my 8-year-old and I'm just like, this is disturbing. Yeah. You know, I mean, and it's like there's this deep cism in his work that, I mean, it's part and parcel of this. 'cause that's what this is [00:05:00] about. I mean, this is about sadism.

Jonah Platt: You'll never be able to read Roll Doll the same way again.

Okay. So now I wanna get a little into you. Dara, the person, your mother was also an academic English teacher with a PhD in Jewish studies. How influential was she on the path that your life has taken?

Dara Horn: Um, dramatically.

Jonah Platt: Yeah, I would imagine. Yeah.

Dara Horn: So, you know, it's funny 'cause my mother grew up in a family that was fairly assimilated in a lot of ways.

Um, you know, I mean she talks about, you know, growing up like with a Christmas tree. Hmm. Um. Her family was members of a synagogue though, you know, and they sent her to Hebrew school and that was, you know, that was like, everybody did that. And she met a teacher at her Hebrew school who she just kind of fell in love with in a lot of ways.

Yeah. Like she really became really attached to this teacher. I. This teacher later became the chair of the Jewish Studies Department at NYU and she followed him. Wow. And did her PhD from him at n NYU's. Cool. And I knew this man growing up. Like, I mean, he was like our family's teacher. His name was, uh, Dr.

Nathan Winter. [00:06:00] His memory be a blessing. He really like, you know, was, you know, trained her in a sense of like having this. Really broad view of Jewish civilization and this amazing history. And the way that looked in my family growing up was me and my siblings. So I'm one of four siblings, and we were expected to bring this kind of creativity into our family's Jewish life.

So it was the kind of thing where like for the Passover Seder, we, the four children we were assigned to, you know, present this sort of like creative, uh, storytelling of the Passover story. We would like write. You know, parody Broadway show tunes. Yeah. And we would put on skits, you know, musical numbers and, you know, all, all sorts of things like that.

Jonah Platt: Something you look forward to or is it like homework? Oh, oh, you guys loved it? Oh, very much. Very

Dara Horn: much. Looking forward to it. That's so cool. Yeah, so hugely looking forward to it. Um, I now have turned this up to 11 with my own family, which I'm happy to tell you about. Yeah. Um, but also just infusing us with that sort of deep.

Not just pride, but real knowledge and, and having the basis be [00:07:00] knowledge. And I mean, it was the kind of thing where, you know, we traveled a lot when I was growing up and, you know, so I had the opportunity to see Jewish communities in places around the world. Yeah,

Jonah Platt: I, I read you said you've been to like 40 countries in your childhood.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a lot of countries. Yes,

Dara Horn: it is. Yeah. It was like, wasn't a vacation unless you had like, you know, get some kind of shot before you, you know, got on the plane.

Jonah Platt: It, it's so interesting to hear you say all that because the next thing I wanted to talk about was. Sort of the, the tree trunk of your Jewish identity based on, you know, listening to you speak and having read a bunch of your work.

What I would say it appears your tree trunk is, is this acknowledgement of this unbroken chain of what it is to be a Jewish, this continuum throughout history. It's sort of at the center of everything you seem to think about and write about. Is that an accurate assessment?

Dara Horn: Yes, it's at the center of who I am.

It mostly comes from my family, obviously. Yeah. My parents, you know, in addition to sort of just the way they've educated us and my mother being, you know, having this academic background and my father was like a person who was like, you know, minion [00:08:00] air. He's like, you know, the guy who's there, like a weekday minion.

Um, oh yeah. You know, he's that guy. You know, my parents were, my mother ran the adult education programs and you know, she also had other roles for me. This also overlapped with my identity as a writer because. As a writer, I was motivated by the, what I've thought about as the problem of time. Yeah. My motivation as a writer didn't come from like, oh, I wanna make up stories.

You know, I would get to bed at the end of the day and I'm like, this day that just happened isn't here anymore. Where did it go? And wanting to have some kind of access to the past and looking for this sort of. Place in a historical continuum, in a country that we live in, that frankly is like kind of pushing against that instinct.

You know, we, you know, like to think of ourselves as always, you know, as Americans as like, you know, always looking forward and, and there's not this sort of obsession with the past as much. And in Jewish life I saw this sort of. First of all, obsession with text, which was great for me as a writer. Right. So I mean, that was another place.

I mean like [00:09:00] literally we're in a tradition where people kiss books. Right, right, right. Literally people, people dance with books, people kiss books or like, I mean, this is like a real great place to be as a writer. Yeah. But also this problem of time, right? Is kind of it, I wouldn't say it's solved by Jewish life, but this idea of what do we do living as mortals in a world that outlasts us?

Like what is our role in that and how do we sort of access this like. Longer continuum of human life. There's this attitude in Jewish tradition that, you know, the past is always present, right? And you see that like at, you know, the Seder, right? Let's, let's where, whereas, you know, every generation you see yourself as if you personally came, came out of Egypt.

You know, we all were standing at Sinai like this. This really resonated with me.

Jonah Platt: Do you still experience that feeling of wanting to. Hold on to time that it's, you know, slipping through your grasp or has that, you know, have you grown out of that? Let's say

Dara Horn: it's the thing I'm always writing about.

Jonah Platt: Mm-hmm.

Dara Horn: [00:10:00] Um, it's the thing I'm always writing about. I don't experience it, no, not the same way that I did when I was younger. When I was younger I was like, you know, keeping these obsessive journals and things like that. And I don't do that anymore. Um, as an adult, that's not what's motivating me. I'm thinking more about.

How to bring that access to the past to a broader audience. Mm-hmm. But that's because I think, you know, I'm in the situation where I'm, you know, I'm a public figure writing about these issues. Right. Um, so it's almost like, it's like a, it's been turned inside out for me in a way.

Jonah Platt: Cool. You want a trip to Israel and Poland to go on March of the Living as a 14-year-old and wrote an article with your journal?

Excerpts that was nominated for a national magazine award. So you were already overachieving it. 14 years old. That's

Dara Horn: a deep cut. I'm very impressed. Yeah.

Jonah Platt: What did you have to say about your experience in Israel and, and Poland that, you know, clearly resonated so much with people?

Dara Horn: I mean, it's so funny 'cause now I look back at this and this is sort of the beginning of people love dead Jews.

Which at the time, you know, it's funny 'cause that, you know, trip March to the Living is very much doing that kind of [00:11:00] juxtaposition of like the Holocaust in Israel and in a way that it does

Jonah Platt: show you how we're continuing on in our future. Yes, it

Dara Horn: does. Um, you know, it also, it is framed around the Holocaust and Israel as a response to the Holocaust.

Right. In a way that I as an adult don't really see it that way. Mm-hmm. The problem with that is that the state of Israel is not a response to the Holocaust. Right. This isn't like. You know, a consolation prize from the un. Right. You know, for like, sorry about the Holocaust. Like this is, it's just like, it doesn't make any sense to think of it that way because that's not what happened, do you think from the

Jonah Platt: minds of the un It was a little bit of

Dara Horn: that.

I think it's not like, oh, you know, the world like, you know, felt bad for the Jews after the Holocaust. No, I mean there's probably, it's definitely framed that way. No, I think it's that there's this refugee crisis. We gotta stick 'em somewhere after the Holocaust. Guess what? Nobody wants those people, right?

Nobody wants those people. Guess why? Nobody wants those people. Same reason. They didn't want 'em in 1935. You, [00:12:00] you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, you know, so this idea that this was like, yay, constellation Prize. Hooray. You earned, you know, we're giving you a state, first of all, like, thinking of it that way.

Undermines the entire, you know. 50 plus years of the modern Zionist movement that built all these institutions without having a state. Mm-hmm. Right. And also building on, you know, ancient Jewish communities that had been there for thousands of years. And so there were always were immigrations to, to the land of Israel whenever it was possible.

I mean, why do you think there was this whole, you know, Jewish community in spot in the, you know, 14 hundreds? Right? I mean. How were they there? If there were, you know, people just showed up after the Holocaust, like, no, that's not, you know, I mean like there, you know, like the Jewish community, Avon, right? I mean, those were Jewish community in Jerusalem.

I mean, these were, you know, ancient communities. I see those, those issues differently now than I did when I was much younger. What that trip really did was, you know, for me it was this access point to this broader historical consciousness, and it was the [00:13:00] beginning of me becoming curious about. What was lost in this European Jewish civilization.

And it was also the beginning of me becoming curious about what is the real essence of Israeli culture and civilization. And if I hadn't gone on that trip at that time, I don't know that I would've. Pursued what I pursued academically in terms of Hebrew and Yiddish literature.

Jonah Platt: Interesting. You know

Dara Horn: what?

That piece got a lot of attention. As you said, it was nominated for National Magazine Award. That was, you know, the beginning of me writing for a broader audience because, you know, that sort of gave me an opportunity to write for a lot of different places, but it always was a little uncomfortable, right?

Because, you know, I'm writing about the Holocaust and I remember feeling a little bit uncomfortable about the fact that this was sort of the topic that had brought me these opportunities. I remember sort of trying to write about that problem a few years later, like when I was, you know, maybe beginning of college trying to try, I remember like sitting and trying to write an essay about.

Why there was something a little bit off about this,

Jonah Platt: just like feeling a little icky that you're [00:14:00] getting recognition for, I didn't thinky, but just

Dara Horn: not icky, but sort of feeling like, not that there's something wrong with this, but that there's something missing and not really understanding how to articulate it and trying.

And I remember that was one of the few times in my life where like I started writing something and I'm like. This is too hard, I can't do it. Mm-hmm. And I abandoned it. And I didn't even think about it again until I was in my forties and I was writing People love dead Jews. Wow. And basically people love dead Jews.

Is that essay?

Jonah Platt: That's so interesting. Yeah.

Dara Horn: That I didn't write after writing that piece.

Jonah Platt: Your first novel in 2002 in the image, uh, national Jewish Book Award winner, and this one does deal with the Holocaust

Dara Horn: a little bit. A little bit. A little bit, yes. There's a character who's a European Jewish refugee.

Jonah Platt: Right.

Dara Horn: We now call those people Holocaust survivors, but that's only because there's so few Holocaust survivors that the bar keeps dropping for what we consider a Holocaust survivor. Mm. Like now, if you left Europe before. Being put in a concentration camp. You count as a survivor, right? Yeah. When I was growing up, that wasn't true.

We called us people refugees.

Jonah Platt: [00:15:00] Interesting.

Dara Horn: Yeah. In fact, people were even reluctant to call themselves survivors if they hadn't been in a concentration camp when I was growing up. I understand that. Yeah. Like my husband's grandparents. We now would call survivors. They would, they never would've called themselves that way.

'cause they're like, well I was never in a concentration camp 'cause they were in hiding. But those people didn't call themselves survivors.

Jonah Platt: Interesting. All other nights civil war period. Mm-hmm. Not one usually associated with Jews. No. Like never. I love the Civil War time. I've read so much about, I find it such a fascinating time.

What drew you to tell that story?

Dara Horn: It's funny 'cause I was. Drawn to write that story because of how polarized America in general and the American Jewish community I felt had become, which to me, this mean

Jonah Platt: 2009. Yeah, yeah. I know.

Dara Horn: It's like, how hilarious is this? Right? I was like, wow. Look how power polarized we are in 2009, right.

The Jewish community in the United States in, you know, in 1860, it's obviously a much smaller community. It was like 150,000 Jews, but like, you know, largest community, not surprising at that time, was in New York City. Second largest community was in New Orleans.

Jonah Platt: Interesting.

Dara Horn: But what was interesting to me was that there [00:16:00] were like all the national churches, for example, a lot of those churches divided when the country, like when the South seceded, so like to even today there's like Southern Baptist, Southern Methodists, right?

That's leftover from a schism in those national. Governing bodies of those churches. Sure. From 1860. Right. There were national Jewish groups in 1860, like bne Brith already existed. There are a couple others that don't exist today. None of them split in 1860. Mm-hmm. And part of it's 'cause the community's pretty small, but also it's because like Jewish community at that time was actually more similar to 21st century Jews in that and, and less similar to their neighbors in that.

They were, it was a very mobile community. Like they mostly weren't farmers, you know, they mostly were, you know, merchants and you know, other people who were part of like merchant networks. They had family members in different parts of the country. So like mm-hmm. Most Americans, when the country split, like they didn't know people right on the other side of the line and the Jews usually did.

Mm-hmm. So very [00:17:00] weird happens when you publish a book about the Civil War, which is that people show up to your book events in costume.

Jonah Platt: In their like re

Dara Horn: costume. Oh, oh yeah. They show up, like people show up at my readings at like, you know, Confederate uniform. Only in the south, their musket and No, no, over I in Pennsylvania and Yeah.

Oh, Pennsylvania. Sure. Other places. Yeah. People would show up with their outfits and everything and they'd tell you about how, like, you know, every year I go to Gettysburg and I. Set up my tent and I, you know, we reenact the battle and I'm like, wow, you're crazy. But then I go home and I'm building a soka in my backyard.

Right? Right. And I'm like, you know, Jews are like, you know, the original reenactors, right. There you go. It's like they're eating heart attack, we're eating matza. You know, it's the same thing. Yeah. Kind of. I mean, yeah.

Jonah Platt: I'm gonna briefly mention your book, eternal Life, uh, which I'm listening to the audio book of it now.

My son, who is six, was listening in the car and he heard the narrator say, Rahl, and he was like, that's Hebrew. And I just like, I love that he was so psyched that there was like a Jewish story being told with Hebrew in it. Which makes me also want to ask, do you, do you [00:18:00] have a non-Jewish audience for your work and have you heard from them and what do they say about what you write?

Dara Horn: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, it's actually a great example of the book you mentioned Eternal Life. Um, so that's, it's about a woman Rahel who. Who can't die. Yeah. It's actually, it's the opposite of people who have dead Jews, right? Yeah. It's about a Jewish woman who can't die, who's been alive for 2000 years.

Mm-hmm. And um, you know, the reason she's been alive for 2000 years is because of a vow she took in the ancient temple in Jerusalem and then the temple's destroyed and she can't get out of this vow. It's obviously this kind of metaphor for Jewish history. That book in particular, is very attractive to non-Jewish readers because it's, um, the ancient parts of that book are set in Roman occupied Jerusalem.

It's really kind of a book about the Jewish revolt against Rome. Mm-hmm. And for Christian readers, that's very resonant because. That's the time of Jesus. Right, right. Like, it's funny, actually, I have, um, the editor of that book, she's not Jewish, and she, I remember editing that book. There was some, some minor comment she made about some historical thing, and she's like, you know, this detail felt a little off to me, but of course I know you know much more than I do about the biblical period.

And [00:19:00] then like, I hung up the phone and then like a little while later I'm thinking like, there's nothing in this book that takes place in the biblical period. And then I realized, wait a minute, for Christians. Roman occupied Jerusalem is the biblical period. Right, right. 'cause that's, the Christian Bible isn't in that setting.

Right. That's where we're getting, so that's very resonant for people. Yeah. So it's like all my books are written in a way that's like accessible to any English language reader.

Jonah Platt: This is the kind of content that I've talked about on the show lot that I wanna see more on screen.

Dara Horn: Yes.

Jonah Platt: Where it's universally appealing stories, but the characters are Jewish and the themes are Jewish and you're getting introduced to Jewish people and ideas and culture.

That way. But the vehicle itself is, is an entertainment.

Dara Horn: Yes, of course.

Jonah Platt: You know? Have you ever had anything optioned?

Dara Horn: Yes. Um, I haven't had anything made. Yeah. Yeah. We gotta get something made. Yeah. Although actually eternal life, there's a, there is somebody who's super interested in, in not only optioning that, but wants me to write the screenplay.

Cool. Unfortunately, I've had to put a pin in that because my hair is on fire with all of these other. Things going on. Yeah. And I'm sort of like, you know, I'm trying to get this nonprofit off [00:20:00] the ground, so I'm kind of putting a pin in that for now.

Jonah Platt: So now, uh, I want to talk about your latest book, which I have right here called One Little Goat.

This is. Brand new just came out. Gimme the log line. Let's start there.

Dara Horn: Sure. It's for young readers, as we say. It's a, it's a graphic novel. What does young readers mean? What's young readers? Um, you know, according to the publisher, middle grade, which is like eight to 12. Okay. But like, it's very like, you know, the, it's like grungy, subversive comic.

The animation even is, yeah. I kind of feel like, honestly it could be, you know, teenagers also. Mm-hmm. Quite frankly, this is a book about a family at a Passover Seder. Um. Where they cannot find their AFI Komen. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, which probably whisperers to this podcast know what that is. Most of them do.

Um, yeah. So, you know, it's this piece of matsa that you hide during the, during the Seder, and then, you know, the Seder can't end. Without the AFI Komen, but this family can't find theirs. And as a result, they're trapped at the Seder for six months. Right. Um, and then six months in, there's a knock on the [00:21:00] door.

I mean, you know, and it's like this crazy situation where, you know, their hair's growing long and the food's regenerating on the table. They're driving each other insane. It's a bit of a covid vibe. Oh yeah. Yeah. And then six months in, there's a knock on the door. Uh, the oldest kid in the family goes to answer the door.

It's a talking goat. Who says, I'm the scapegoat, I'm the reason for all your problems. And he says, I can help you find the Safi Komen. And the kid gets says, great, where is it? And the goat says, oh, no, no, no, no, not where when. And he says. While you've been trapped at this Seder during these past six months, thousands of years of previous seders have accumulated underneath your Seder, you now have to travel down into those seders to find your AFI Komen.

So it becomes this sort of, um, you know, journey through Jewish history. I

Jonah Platt: read it, I loved it. I thought that was really cool. First of all, why'd you write a book for young readers? Why is this the audience?

Dara Horn: You know, I started it thinking about, um. Thinking about this graphic novel form and you know how fun it would be to do something like that.

Yeah, this about this in the back of my head and you know, I kind of [00:22:00] parked it and then at some point I was on a road trip with my family and we stopped at some comic book shop and my kids like went nuts in this comic book shop. And one of the books they came home with was by this indie cartoonist, Theo Ellsworth, who you know now is my, my collaborator.

It was a book of his called Capacity, um, just, you know, real thick indie comics volume. Really very, very surreal and amazing, and. My kids were fighting over this book, and I was like, what is this book that you guys are obsessed with? And I took it and I was just like, enchanted by his artwork. Like he's very like, edgy, kind of subversive things that he's does, but like he turns abstract ideas into physical things.

Mm-hmm. You know, I was thinking about him and I had this, this is an idea I've been thinking about since I was a child,

Jonah Platt: um, which, which aspect of it, um,

Dara Horn: this idea that when you're sitting at the Seder, at the Passover Seder, you're sitting on top. Of all of these thousands of previous seders. Mm. Just feeling like this is a moment when you have that access to the past.

And so what, when you talked about, you know, writing for children, there's a lot of this [00:23:00] like. Portal fiction. Mm. For children, right. Where there's like some portal to another world, right? Yeah. Or like whether it's, you know, like Harry Potter, you know, you go through on the nine and a half platform or whatever.

Yeah. And you like, you know, Narnia. Like, there's a lot of that kind of stuff where it's like there's some portal from your ordinary life to this like magical world. There's a reason that kids want that. Right. I love

Jonah Platt: that stuff.

Dara Horn: Well, I mean. A lot of people love that stuff. And the reason people love it is because they feel their lives are very confined to where, you know, they, they feel like their lives are small.

Yeah. Um, and children's lives actually are small, and so that's why children crave that like portal. But you know, I think also in Jewish tradition, it's like. We basically have made that portal to this broader life. Right? Like it, like when you live your life as a Jew, your life is always bigger than your life.

Right? Right. You are always sort of partaking of this like vast civilizational chain. Um, I mean, you could say all humans are. [00:24:00] But like in Judaism, that is like made literal, right? Yes. I mean, it's like this active thing where it's like, you know, every person sees themself as if they came out of Egypt.

Right. And so I just thought like, what an amazing opportunity to sort of give children like that portal into this bigger life, which they actually do have Right. Children. And, and the, and the Passover story is all about like inviting children into that, right? Right. The whole purpose of the Passover Seder is to engage children in this civilizational chain.

Jonah Platt: Yeah. What is your Passover like? I mean, you talked about how, like what's you turning it up to 11, your childhood, you know, uh, performance,

Dara Horn: as I said, I have four children. Mm-hmm. It's actually a lot of, uh, it's a very c child heavy, uh, Seder because my parents You're one of four yourself? I'm one of four.

Yeah. So my parents have 14 grandchildren. Yeah. We are traditional in that we do every single page of the ha, but we're very not traditional in that we use technology. So what was important to me was it was important to me to be able to do every page of the ha, but. I've got like a room full of rowdy children, right?

So I'm [00:25:00] like, how do I involve people? Please enlighten me. So, yes. Oh my God. So. Every single page of the hug, God, it, we do special effects.

Jonah Platt: Okay. Full

Dara Horn: blown special effects. So I'm just gonna give you a Yeah, please. Gimme a taste. We build out our basement into a walkthrough experience. Wow. So we put up, um, like black, uh, paper paneling that we paint with neon paint and we have black lights.

Part of it is like an Egyptian tomb and part of it's an Egyptian palace. We have another room that's like done up with like. Painted like Stonewall and like, you know, those artificial candles where it's like you're in the Israelites home where they're sacrificing a lamb, you know? And then we have another room where like, you know, they're, you're in the Egyptian palace with the Pharaoh's sun, and then the angel of death pops out of a closet with a sight and like takes him down.

And then, you know, there's sort of like, it's like a haunted house for a Oh, totally. Yeah. It's like, exactly. It's the model. How

Jonah Platt: are you, is it being narrated as you walk through? They're

Dara Horn: act. They're actors. Yeah. Yeah. My four children are the actors in this. And then, or, or sometimes my husband and I'll play certain roles and, um, the rest of our guests are walk, are, are walking through and we break 'em into [00:26:00] groups of, you know, three or four people at a time that we come from.

Oh my gosh. Oh, I didn't finish it though. Oh. Because then when you come out at the, um, after you leave the basement, you into our garage. We have set up in the garage. It's a laser swamp. Do you know what that is? No. Like you put, um, well we do this with blue lasers at waist height, and then we've got fog machines.

Right. Then the fog, right. You can see the lasers through the fog. Well, it fills up with fog only up to the point of the lasers. So there's a surface to the lasers. You're walking through a waist high surface, which looks like water and it parts in front of you as you walk through it.

Jonah Platt: Wow. So

Dara Horn: it's like you're.

Parting the sea, so I mean, very high production value. Yeah. Oh, very, very high. I haven't even gotten into like, that's, that's like the tiniest piece of what do, oh my God. I mean, we have plague drops. We have like, you know, 150 pig pong balls that fall from the ceiling. Oh. Well also, all the kids in the family are assigned, and this is participatory for the kids as well.

This, we assign it a month in advance. We make a movie every year of the entire Passover story. We split up the parts of the story for the different. Groups of kids in the family and every year they put on a different [00:27:00] production of whatever that is of that story. And it's like, it's hilarious. This is unbelievable.

I mean, we did one, like, like I remember my kids got assigned, um, a couple years ago, the won a, the Wild Beasts Uhhuh. It's like one the Plagues, right. And they did this parody of the movie Cocaine Bear, where it was Mates Bear and it's like the bear like. Digging into this like bag of flour. That's funny.

It's hilarious. Yeah. So it's like, you know, every year is something totally different. How,

Jonah Platt: how do you guys handle the portion, the dry portion of the hagada?

Dara Horn: We screen these pieces of the movie,

Jonah Platt: so someone gets assigned on the Tressed arm page.

Dara Horn: Um, so that outstretched arm, this is, um, the wandering RMA in paragraph, so that, that's like a whole other piece that we do where my daughter is the wandering a man and she puts on this like at costume where she's got like a beard and a robe and we film her walking around in like.

Through Newark Airport.

Jonah Platt: This is the, like, you know, or she like on to New Jersey Transit. Most anyone has ever put into any Jewish holiday ever. I mean, you have no idea. Like, I could keep going is crazy. We, our whole podcast just

Dara Horn: about what my, we do at my Seder. I mean, it's, it's like, you know, I've, I've unfortunately raised the bar so high that now we're [00:28:00] like, oh my God, how are we gonna talk this year?

How,

Jonah Platt: how many hours, man hours would you say go into this Seder?

Dara Horn: Well, I've made a rule that we don't plan anything until after Purim. Purim is exactly four weeks before pay socks. Okay, so you'll so four weeks before customer into. Uh, to that month. Yeah. 'cause otherwise I would go not happy, although, like the rest of the year, like, I mean, I will tell you that like, you know, many times we'll go to the Halloween store on November 1st and be like, is there anything good here that we might wanna buy?

Like, you know, we got the

Jonah Platt: Google Doc going all year of ideas. Yeah. No, we weren't thinking about it. I love that. And it's absolutely insane. And I, and I love it. It's

Dara Horn: completely insane. Like, I don't know what I'm doing to myself.

Jonah Platt: All right, Tara, we're gonna bring it home after this Incredible. Thought provoking, deep discussion with, uh, a little lightning round as we like to do here on being Jewish.

I mean, maybe we know the answer already, but what's your favorite Jewish holiday? Yeah, I

Dara Horn: think, you know, okay.

Jonah Platt: Uh, it speaks for itself least favorite Jewish holiday.

Dara Horn: Probably something, you know, these minor ones like ish fought like, uh, what's

Jonah Platt: wrong with ish fat? Eh,

Dara Horn: I don't know. It's like, well, because you're living in North American and this is like, you know, new year of the trees and I'm like, there's snow on the ground.

Right, right. Oh yeah, yeah. That goes back to that, you know, these are, you know, practices [00:29:00] that are related to the micro climate of the land of Israel. So yeah, it's hard to connect in North America To that.

Jonah Platt: Who are one or some of your favorite Jewish voices today that you like to. Consume

Dara Horn: my dear friend Sarah Herwitz, who I know is, uh, you know, also been in, in this podcast.

She has. Yeah. And she's one of mine as well. She's, she's fantastic. And, uh, I mean, she's got a book other people haven't read yet, but I've had the good fortune to read. So pre-order it now as a Jew. Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. Coming out in the fall, um, I, I love her. There's some people like, in terms of writing about this topic, who, you know, have sort of changed some of my thinking about it.

Yeah. Somebody like, um, AOT Wolf. Mm-hmm. Um, she's like more like, like a political theorist. Yeah. Um, I'm really interested in her work, um, you know, from a very different perspective. Somebody like Yoi Klein Vy Sure. Um, is really interested in this. Interesting in this perspective. Um, uh, my dear friend, Mati Friedman, who's an Israeli journalist.

Mm-hmm. Um, I, I think his stuff is really, really insightful. Um, I've definitely got one of his books on my show. Oh, yeah. You, you should have him on this. On, he's amazing. Okay. Yeah. He's fantastic.

Jonah Platt: I'll have you set it up.

Dara Horn: [00:30:00] Yeah.

Jonah Platt: You get off the plane in Israel, you're going straight to. Blank

Dara Horn: probably to see my husband's family.

Jonah Platt: Oh, nice. Yeah. Um, which, uh, where do they live?

Dara Horn: Um, they're in Kiva, which is where, yeah, it's like a, it's part of Tel Aviv. Basically.

Jonah Platt: If you could have anyone from the past at your Shabbat table, who would it be?

Dara Horn: Maybe mz.

Jonah Platt: Who is that?

Dara Horn: Who is that? He's a superhero. Who you've never heard of. Yeah. Probably the greatest ish writer of the 20th century say his name against lower Av Ramz.

Sutz. Yes. He's a hero of the, of the partisans of the Vil N Ghetto. Mm. Um, he like was involved in this paper brigade, which was rescuing the treasures of Yvo, the Institute for Jewish Research, which was this giant archive of, uh, of Jewish texts in Vilna that now. It's now in, it's in Union Square, in New York City at Evo.

Wow. And then, you know, rebuilt Yiddish speaking culture in Israel after the war, basically single-handedly, you know, created Yiddish publishing in [00:31:00] Israel after the war. I mean, you lived a long life. You only died in I think, 2010. Is there anything in

Jonah Platt: English. Written about him. There's translations. So there translations

Dara Horn: of his there.

Actually now, very recently, there's been a bunch of translations of his work. Okay, great. Um, so you can find Yeah, like, um, his testimony at the Nuremberg Trials and his Oh, wow. His documents from the V in the ghetto. Fantastic. But yeah, there's a lot of, his poetry is also available in English.

Jonah Platt: Okay, great.

If you could live in any other era, which era would it be?

Dara Horn: Oh man, they all suck. We're so lucky. Good answer. We're so, so lucky. Great. Yeah.

Jonah Platt: What's your favorite Passover song?

Dara Horn: Well, I wrote a whole book based on Claude Ga. So that's, yeah, I'd say that's probably my favorite. My family goes

Jonah Platt: in on that one. The

Dara Horn: truth about cloud gall is it probably is just like a drinking song that was imported from something else, and that was sort of, you know, there's, you know, after four cups of wine, there's a bunch of drinking songs at the end of the ha.

Right. Um, but like, I love, there's one interpretation of that song that's about how this is actually. A metaphor for Jewish history because it's, you know, one little goat my father bought for [00:32:00] zuze, and then the cat eats the goat and all these other creatures that eat each other and attack each other, um, that the, the goat is the Jewish people.

My father is God. Mm-hmm. The two zoo that that the father buys him for are the two tablets of the 10 Commandments. Okay. And then all of these other elements that come in the song, these animals and these things that attack each other are these empires that conquered the Jewish people over many years.

And so it's like, and I forget the. Correlation. It's like the Cadis, I think the Babylonians who destroy the temple. It's like the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the, you know, it goes up to like the last one from, you know, it's probably, I think it's the Crusaders, you know, who massacred Jews in the Rhineland.

And then it's, you know, at the end it's sort of, you know, God kills the angel of death. Right. And that's sort of this like, you know, this like hope for the future that you're gonna break through this cycle.

Jonah Platt: That's nice. Yeah. I'm gonna bring that to my Seder. Yeah. Okay, last thing. Can you leave my audience with either some food for thought or some call to action?

In, in the Heini moment that we're in right now.

Dara Horn: Yeah. We've been talking a lot about, um, Passover in this conversation. [00:33:00] Yeah. 'cause, you know, one little goat, I have a Passover book coming out. Mm-hmm. I've often said to Jewish audiences that I feel like this is a, a Queen Esther moment. For us, if you think about the Purim story, the Purim story is about these Jews in the, in, in a diaspora community, right.

In the Persian Empire. And, you know, there's this, you know, call for the genocide of Jews. Yeah. Um, and you know, at first, you know, queen Esther is in this position where she has this opportunity to influence the king. And, you know, her Uncle Mordecai says to her, you know, you need to act, you need to tell the king, you know, to stop this decree.

And she's like. But if I go to the king and uninvited, I could be killed. And that reminds me of that like college student who's like, you know, oh, I didn't say anything. 'cause you know, if I would, I might've been doxed, or I might've been, yeah. You know, pill read online. But then he says, you know, maybe this is the reason you became Queen, to use your power in this moment.

Mm-hmm. As the Jewish people in the 21st century. This is our Queen Esther moment. And what's funny to me is that like when she goes to the [00:34:00] king, like the king actually turns out to be on her side. You know, like most people are not malicious, right? Right. Most people are just ignorant. He's like, oh, it's like, did I sign that decree?

I must have been drunk. Right. We are so fortunate in this country to have this opportunity to be part of this conversation where we can, you know, really take control of our lives and our, and our community. Not, not take control of our communities, but participate in our communities and change the conversation.

And, uh, that's what I'm hoping to do with my nonprofit. That's what I've been trying to do with all of my work. But I think it's something that all of us can do is, you know. Participate in those conversations and really use yeah, your use

Jonah Platt: platform, your role, wherever it is, wherever you are to, to do something.

Yes.

Dara Horn: This is your, your Queen Esther moment where you can stand up against hatred.

Jonah Platt: Dara, thank you so much for everything. Uh, this was such a great discussion. This was so. Satisfying for me. So happy to have you here. Thank you.

Dara Horn: Thank you for everything you're doing. I'm really, uh, I've, I've looked to you and, and your guests for really, um, defining this moment and it's really, um, you're doing fantastic work.

So thank you. Thank you. [00:35:00]

Jonah Platt: And, uh, one Little goat is out now. You can get it online. Bring it to your Passover Seder, give it as a, an AFI Komen Finding Prize. Um, it's fantastic. You won't regret it there. Thank you so much. Thank

Dara Horn: you.

Jonah Platt: I wanna thank Dr. Dara Horn for her vital wisdom for helping all of us open our eyes a bit more, and thank her many ancestors through the generations for helping her to be here with us today.

Uh, I wanna wish Dara and all of you who celebrate pe a very happy and meaningful Passover to you all. Be like, Dara, bring some meaning into your Seder. Try something new. And as we say, every year, next year, may we be in Jerusalem. I'll see y'all back here for the next liberating episode of being Jewish with me, Jonah Platt.