In short
Dara Horn explains how antisemitism in America after Oct. 7, 2023 is driven by an enduring “lie” rather than mere prejudice, and argues that Jewish civilization itself is an anti-tyrannical counterculture that historically provokes power.
Guest background
Dara Horn is an American novelist, essayist, and scholar of Jewish literature with a Harvard doctorate in comparative literature. She wrote People Love Dead Jews and her new book is The Final Solution to the Jewish Question. She has advised institutions, testified in a congressional investigation, and worked on issues like “data poisoning” affecting AI.
Key claims
Antisemitism is “institutionalized” after Oct. 7; Jews are an “acid test” for pluralism (debate/dissent). Left- and right-wing antisemitism are the same underlying lie. Effective education should be “pre-bunking” and teaching antisemitism as a power-seeking fabrication: “Jews are destroying what you value the most.”
Notable examples
Thomas Sowell’s “Are Jews Generic?”; the “tyranny exercise” where students predict compliance/resistance; Johann von Lehrs—Nazi ideologue later used by Nasser/Arab League and Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda (“Zionism is racism/colonialism/apartheid/genocide”). She also critiques Holocaust education as “null curriculum” when it’s the only taught content about Jews.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Anti-Semitism Lorax
0:04 to 0:28
Dara explains her feelings of being the 'anti-Semitism Lorax' and the impact of recent events.
“Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes.”
The Anti-Semitism Lorax
1:19 to 1:30
Dara explains her feelings of being the 'anti-Semitism Lorax' and the impact of recent events.
The Anti-Semitism Lorax
1:34 to 2:16
Dara explains her feelings of being the 'anti-Semitism Lorax' and the impact of recent events.
“but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be.”
Understanding Anti-Semitism
2:16 to 6:10
A deep dive into the nature of antisemitism and its historical context.
“and thank you to everyone at UJA and 92Y for making this happen.”
Jewish Civilization and Society
6:10 to 11:34
Discussion on how Jewish civilization challenges societal norms and its historical resilience.
“culture that has run into this problem in so many different places.”
Economic Perspectives on Anti-Semitism
11:34 to 14:00
Exploring economic theories related to Jewish communities and their historical success.
“I'm curious what you think of other theories of anti-Semitism.”
Economic Explanation of Jewish Success
14:00 to 26:06
Explore the historical reasons for Jewish economic success and resilience.
“They're answering a slightly different question, which is why have Jewish minorities often thrived in different societies?”
Economic Explanation of Jewish Success
26:10 to 27:29
Explore the historical reasons for Jewish economic success and resilience.
“but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be.”
Misunderstanding Blood Libel
27:35 to 28:00
Discuss the common misconceptions around the term 'blood libel' in modern discourse.
“This is precisely the kind of audience that most people could actually describe what that actually means, right?”
Understanding Blood Libel and Ignorance
28:00 to 29:33
Learn about the misconceptions surrounding blood libel and the general ignorance about antisemitism.
“He deploys that term as if he knows what it means, and then it turns out he has no idea what it means.”
Show all 23 chapters
Defining Jewish Identity
29:34 to 31:09
Explore the complexities of Jewish identity and the misunderstandings surrounding it.
“Yes, I mean, it is like the level of ignorance is like staggering.”
Zionism and Misconceptions
31:10 to 33:09
Discuss common misconceptions about Zionism and its implications in today's society.
“And, you know, I hate half the Jews in the world who live in Israel, but I love the Jewish faith, right?”
Holocaust Education Critique
33:10 to 34:48
Examine the shortcomings of Holocaust education and its implications for understanding Jewish history.
“But yes, I mean, look, the only other thing I'll say about ignorance is that, I mean, I often have said this, there is a lot more ignorance than malice.”
Oversights in Jewish Educational Narratives
34:49 to 36:16
Understand the issues with how Jewish narratives are taught and perceived in education.
“It's about becoming first to market in somebody's brain.”
Consequences of Limited Jewish Representation
36:17 to 38:18
Learn about the dangers of a narrow focus on Jewish identity within education and media.
“this total ignorance of history I mean history education in this country has gone down the toilet.”
The Nature of Anti-Semitism
38:19 to 39:38
Explore how anti-Semitism manifests across different political ideologies and its common themes.
“Like, that completely comports with what you learned in school.”
The Interconnectedness of Anti-Semitism
39:39 to 42:00
Discuss the similarities between right-wing and left-wing anti-Semitism and their shared narratives.
“Are they equally worrisome to you, or do you worry more about one than the other?”
The Evolution of Anti-Zionism
42:00 to 45:28
Explore the historical context of anti-Zionist rhetoric and its persistent themes.
“use it as part of their anti-zionist campaign in the 1960s which is all the slogans we still hear today.”
Cultural Identity and Jewish Advocacy
45:28 to 47:44
Discuss the importance of American Jews advocating for their cultural identity in a changing society.
“saw that don't ask, don't tell was itself homophobic because it's accommodating homophobia.”
Navigating Friendships Amidst Misinformation
47:44 to 52:05
Learn strategies to maintain friendships while addressing misinformation about Israel.
“Yeah, I think it was Bill Maher who said that, you know, the greatest mistake Democrats ever made in this country is to make the flag a Republican Party symbol.”
Debate and Dissent in Jewish Tradition
52:05 to 56:00
Understand the value of debate and dissent in Jewish culture and its implications for contemporary issues.
“friend or loved one the subtext, I'm interested in what you have to say.”
Exploring Anti-Zionism and Its Origins
56:00 to 59:50
Learn about the historical roots of anti-Zionism and its implications today.
“Yeah, so hats off to people who are on many different messages.”
Courage and Integrity in Jewish Identity
59:50 to 1:00:03
Discover the importance of courage in Jewish identity and community resilience.
“And I hope all of you will be inspired to be part of the solution.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents, but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes.
0:28Coleman Hughes: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 anti-Semitism in America, especially since October 7th. We talk about why America has been different historically from Europe with respect to anti-Semitism.
1:07Coleman Hughes:We talk about how anti-Semitism 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 Horne.
1:30This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents, but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit, and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes.
2:13Coleman Hughes:Dara Horn, it's great to be with you. Coleman, great to be with you, and thank you to everyone at UJA and 92Y for making this happen. Absolutely. Thank you so much. One more round of applause for our organizers. Yes.
2:30Coleman Hughes:Your new book is very meekly and not at all provocatively titled Not at all. The 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. Yes. Yes. What do you mean by that? 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.
3:32Because then no one will sit near you on the beach.
3:35Coleman Hughes:Even better on the subway. Yes, even better, yes, exactly. 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 Lorax, right? I'm sitting here yelling, I speak for the Jews, and then it's 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.
4:15Like, 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. I was 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, and people from the tech world who came to me about what's called data poisoning on various platforms that were feeding AI models.
5:02I felt like I was so out of my depth and I was like, I was 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.
5:36Coleman Hughes:So I want to read a quote from the book. And in the book, a key question you address is what actually is antisemitism 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 antisemitism 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.
6:36Coleman Hughes:Explain that to me. 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. Right? 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.
7:15Uncoolness is Judaism's brand. You know, this goes back 3 ,000 years to, you know, 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. Like Jews have never been cool. And so what I realized is that like this idea that like, you know, 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.
8:05Because, you know, the only people who are proposing connections between them are like deranged bigots, right? 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.
8:43So 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. 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 an anti-tyrannical movement. It's also a movement that's based on this story of freedom, right? This is a foundational legend in Judaism or, you know, the story of the Exodus that suggests that social order can be changed.
9:28It's based on an idea about the, that freedom requires responsibility, that you have this set of laws that are, you know, that are 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, right?
10:04Can your society accept debate and dissent, right? Is this a society where you're not going to say that the only way you're not going to hate people is because if they're just like everyone else. Yeah.
10:18Coleman Hughes:I'm a huge fan of Walter Russell Mead's book, The Arc of the Covenant, which will be familiar to many people in the audience. I had him on my podcast as well. And part of the argument he makes there is that it's not an accident that America has 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 very unusual in the 18th century.
11:09Coleman Hughes: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 anti-Semitism. 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?
12:00Coleman Hughes:By which he means, is anti-Semitism 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 has happened with Chinese in Asia.
12:58Coleman Hughes:And perhaps anti-Semitism 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? 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 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, a book titled The Chosen Few, it came out about 10 or 15 years ago by two economic historians, Maristella Baudicini and Zvi Eckstein.
13:48And 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? And, 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.
14:20And 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 in 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.
15:14So 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 And it made a point that what that did was 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. This is the kind of book where they bring a lot of charts and graphs to collect all these census data from historical periods. But to his larger point about, are Jews generic, as he puts it, right, another wonderful title, which I love.
16:01I actually, you know, I think that there's this, to me, what's interesting about anti-Semitism is less that it's about scapegoating a minority, which, yes, this is a very common thing. I mean, you know, everybody, 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 anti-Semitism, what makes it unusual, is mostly just that it's old, and the reason it's old is because there aren't a whole lot of ancient groups from the ancient world that are still here. And to me, that's the really interesting story about Jewish civilization, is less the sort of litany of horror, because frankly, that's the least interesting and least unusual part of Jewish history, right?
16:46There's many, many groups in the world that have been through all kinds of persecutions and that sort of thing. What is so unusual about Jewish civilization is that Jewish civilization has survived all of that and is still here from the ancient world. And to me, that is the product of these kinds of choices that Jewish communities made over centuries, which was a choice to not assimilate into dominant empires, which was the default. Most people, most groups in the ancient world, they were conquered by the Romans, they were conquered by Christianity took over Europe and the Americas. Islam took over the Near East and North Africa and Central Asia.
17:29Most of the cultures that those societies conquered disappeared. Like you don't have a lot of Aztecs today. You don't hear from those people. I mean, these are things you read about, you learn about in school. But what were all the many cultures that existed in Europe, pre-Christian cultures? You don't hear a lot about those people. that those cultures don't still endure. And the Jews are still here. To me, that is what's so unusual, and what I think is so fascinating is that it happened because of choices that the Jewish community made at various points in history that were unusual, not only unusual choices, but countercultural choices, high-risk choices in a lot of cases, expensive choices, choices like teaching your children how to read.
18:19Coleman Hughes:So one of the choices that the Jewish community and American throughout the West faces now is how to address the rise in anti-Semitism. Yes. And the terms of the debate as I've heard my Jewish friends arguing with each other about over the past three years since October 7th have been roughly one route is to educate people out of their anti-Semitism, to tell them why that idea is wrong, to make sure they understand and are armed with facts, and to debunk all of the lies that are being spread on social media and podcasts. A different route is to say, well look, we're not going to beg people not to hate us, we're not going to educate people out of hating us if they want to hate us.
19:12Coleman Hughes:So the proper path is to double down on what makes our community strong, build parallel institutions so that we have the ability to opt out of the institutions that are captured by anti-Semitism. And so these are sort of two different paths. I mean, in principle, you can do both, but in practice, they represent two different impulses. And I'm curious if you agree that those are the terms of the debate and where you stand on that. So I know that the debate is frequently framed that way. I reject the framing. I reject the framing. Because I think that there's, as I said before, the mistake is thinking that these are two separate stories.
20:00that the story of Jewish civilization, which we want to hunker down and celebrate and educate our children about and screw all the haters and forget it and build our own institutions and just live there, versus the story of anti-Semitism and trying to, as you put it, convince our neighbors not to hate us, that those are sort of two different stories or two different projects. No, they're one story. They're one story. This is the way I approach it. I have a new nonprofit called the Tell Institute, where we are taking this path of education. And the reason, and I want to be clear about this, this is literally what we do is, it's very short, it's a crash course, it is eight lessons.
20:41We do this for public schools, we've already done this in, I'm going to get the numbers wrong, 13 public high schools with wonderful results. We now are, I think it's going to be 50 public high schools this fall. We also are, and then what I will tell you is that this is how I know it's the same problem. I thought of it as an outward facing project. And then I started getting tons of requests from within the Jewish community for this same curriculum. So I created a B 'nai Mitzvah version of it for students, Bar and Bat Mitzvah students. I created a product for within the Jewish community as well.
21:12And we're rolling out both of these this fall. The way we teach about this is ultimately those two things are inseparable. You cannot separate the content of Jewish civilization from anti-Semitism. And I reject the framing of we're trying to defend against all of these libels and trying to get people not to hate us. That is the framing I reject. The framing I present instead is this. We do not teach in this curriculum about anti-Semitism as a bigotry or a bias. The remedy for a bigotry or a bias would be something more like empathy, right? Like trying to show what we have in common, trying to get people not to hate you, so to speak.
21:53We are not teaching about anti-Semitism as a bigotry. We are teaching about anti-Semitism as a lie. It is a lie that people use to gain or maintain power. And the lie is always the same. Jews are destroying what you value the most. That's it. Jews are destroying what you value the most. And the only thing that changes in different eras, different social settings, different social circles, different cultures, is what you value the most. So, you know, if you're in a deeply Christian society, then the whole rhetoric is around Jews are, you know, are Christ killers. If you're in a, you know, if you're in a racist society, Jews are an inferior race.
22:39If you're in an anti-racist society, Jews are racist, right? I mean, this is, and we teach this to the students, it's like a plug and play, because, you know, it's like, who is the liar? What is the value? What is the lie that's told about the Jews that they're destroying the value? And it's like, so simple. So like you talked about debunking. I think that it's a mistake that people make when they try to step into that defendant's box, right? When someone says, oh, you know, Jews are genocidal baby killers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then are like, when you say, oh, well, here's 10 reasons why Jews are not genocidal baby killers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
23:15The minute you do that, you are stepping into that defendant's dock. You are participating in this bogus show trial. Why would you do that? Why would you participate in this debate? So, you know, to me, what this is about is less about debunking than about what, and this is something I've looked at, there's a lot of research on this, what researchers call pre-bunking. Pre-bunking is much more effective than debunking. When you warn people, they're going to encounter this lie. And also, why are they going to encounter this lie? This is a lie told by people who want to gain or maintain power. People who want to gain or maintain power, which is everyone from the middle school student who wants to be the coolest kid in school to, like, the Ayatollah.
24:02Right? I mean, there's a broad range. You can fill in your favorite people in between. You know, but this is... People have something to gain from this, right? This benefit, the lie benefits the liar. And so the attention for debunking this goes to the liar, right? That is the way to debunk it. It's like, who is benefiting from this lie? And then also drawing them back to focusing on that, you know, this, like I said, this is an anti-tyrannical movement since ancient times. One of, and this is the end of what I'll say because I know I've been going on for a while, But one of my favorite lessons that we do for the students is what we call the tyranny exercise, where we have this present the students with a hypothetical where it says, you know, you're from a small community that values its traditions.
24:53You know, a powerful empire takes over with a powerful ruler, takes over your community, conquers your community, and says from now on, independent decision making is banned. Right? There will be no participation in any, you know, these traditions are banned. you no longer can participate in this culture you've been part of. Anyone who disagrees with this or opposes this will be punished. And we say, what do you do? And we put signs in four corners of the room. One is, I agree with this completely because anyone who conquered us must be doing something right. Another is, I don't agree, but I'm going to go along to avoid conflict.
25:29A third one is, I will resist this order, but only silently to protect myself and my family. I will oppose openly. And I remember when we first developed this thinking, like, isn't this kind of patronizing to the students? Like, every teenage rebel is going to go to the oppose openly corner of the room. In our first classrooms, I will tell you, no, not a single person oppose openly. Everyone goes to the comply. And I'm like, wow. And this sort of opens people's eyes to what it means to be, you know, part of a pluralistic society and what the stakes really are to make that possible. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks.
26:09Back to school season can be tough on parents, but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit, and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes. chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month each lasting four hours or more can make me feel
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27:07Coleman Hughes:Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Okay, so, you know, speaking of debunking lies, you know, in a room like this, everyone knows what I mean when I say the word blood libel.
27:47Coleman Hughes:This is precisely the kind of audience that most people could actually describe what that actually means, right? But we learned recently that the vice president of the United States, educated at Yale, has no idea what blood libel means. No, apparently not. But uses it. He deploys that term as if he knows what it means, and then it turns out he has no idea what it means. And then even more depressing than that, one of the most popular podcasts in the country, Pod Save America, was discussing this about President Vance. And in the middle of the discussion, they realized that they didn't know what a blood libel was either.
28:29Coleman Hughes:And one of them thought it was the charge that Jews kill Jesus, which is not with a blood libel. So, you know, one of the ironic things is I've heard many educated people that care about anti-Semitism, whether you're on TV, on cable news, or on a stage like this, say, look, that's similar to a blood libel, right? And do we all have to wake up and realize that actually nobody knows what that means? The only people that know what a blood libel is are Jews, hardcore anti-Semites that have studied their anti-Semitism, and like me and Douglas Murray and Michael Moynihan. Nobody else knows. Well, hats off to you and Douglas Murray.
29:16Coleman Hughes:But if that's true, does the fight against anti-Semitism have to descend to the low intellectual level of a lot of the people in the fight, if that makes sense? Short answer, yes. Yes. Yes, I mean, it is like the level of ignorance is like staggering. And I mean, look, we see this. I mean, this is a hallmark of what we've seen in anti-Semitism in the past few years. All these people chanting from the river to the sea. I mean, nobody knows which river, nobody knows which sea. Right? I mean, there's not even like a pretense toward interest in the realities here. So, you know, this is, but you're correct that, like, I think people in the Jewish community and maybe people like you maybe make this mistake of thinking, like, if you mention this, then people will get it.
30:14They're not going to get it. They're not going to get it. And so you have to become what I think it's Irving Howe years and years ago called the master of the subordinate phrase. Like, it is our job, people like me and you who are, you know, people who are explainers to the public and various media to educate the public. And that is our responsibility. Look, part of what we're doing at the Tell is making this as simple as possible, making this something that a 13-year-old can understand, because it is actually something a 13-year-old can understand. Jews are destroying what you value the most.
30:50Fill in the blank. What do you value the most? Who's benefiting from pushing this in your eyeballs all day long? Right? But, like, yeah, I mean, we do. way. And I think that also, it gets even more basic than that, Coleman, because what I found is that no one knows who Jews are. No one knows who Jews are. I mean, I have spoken in so many places where people say, you know, are Jews a religion, are Jews an ethnicity, are Jews a nationality, or then, of course, you know, we have all of our favorite people these days saying, you know, like, oh, I love the Jewish religion. I love the Jewish faith. And, you know, I hate half the Jews in the world who live in Israel, but I love the Jewish faith, right?
31:29I mean, this is a very, you know, this is, you know, a very popular tactic. Jews aren't a religion. Jews have a religion, which many Jews observe, many do not, but like millions of Jews are secular. Have you ever met a secular Mormon? Probably not, right? Because Mormonism is a religion. So like, there's an answer to who Jews are. Jews are a joinable tribal group with a shared history, homeland, and culture. That was a sentence in English. In Hebrew, it's one word. It's two letters long. Am. Jews are Am Yisrael, the people of Israel. And the reason this category is unfamiliar to modern people is because other groups like this were assimilated into empires and destroyed.
32:12Right? There aren't a lot of groups like this left. So, yeah, you do have to give that sentence and explain it. But you're correct. Nobody knows what the blood libel is. Certainly nobody knows what Zionism is. I just had a reader this morning who wrote to me, they said, oh, I saw you on Morning Joe, and you were talking about Zionism, and you said most Jews are Zionists, and that can't possibly be, because, you know, Zionism is when you believe everything that's written in the Old Testament about the promised land. I'm like, that's a new one. Like, I never heard that one before. So, yeah, I mean, we cannot assume.
32:46Did Theodor Herzl believe that?
32:46Coleman Hughes:I don't think so. What? By that definition, Theodor Herzl wasn't a Zionist. I mean, exactly. Exactly. Most Jews are not Zionist by that definition. Right? But as you say, I mean, the anti-Semites seem to know what it is. I mean, certainly all the Islamist jihadis know exactly what it is. So, I mean, yes. Candace Owens knows exactly what a blood libel is because she believes Christian babies disappear on Passover. You know, she knows. They're up to date on that. Yes. But yes, I mean, look, the only other thing I'll say about ignorance is that, I mean, I often have said this, there is a lot more ignorance than malice.
33:22And I feel like that is an opportunity. That is an opportunity that I think we're not taking advantage of enough.
33:30Coleman Hughes:How do we take advantage of that better? I think that people are actually really curious about who Jews are. And they have nowhere to go with their curiosity. Right? Because what are you going to do, like, Google Jews? Right? I mean, have fun with that. have fun. So I mean, this is like, there are opportunities for us to reset this conversation with these very basic definitions. There are opportunities for that in AI. I know there's some people in the audience here who are working on this project. There's opportunities for this in social media. There's opportunities for this in education. I mean, the reason I started the tell was because I was, and the reason I wrote this book was because I was like, Jews have been erased from school curricula, right?
34:13I mean, the only thing that often Jews will learn about, American students will learn about Jews in public schools, if they learn anything at all, is that Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. And that's like the, and it was, one of the things I write about in the book about Holocaust education is being in the Dallas Holocaust Museum and hearing from one of the docents there that sometimes the students will ask him, are there still Jews alive today? I mean, this is a profound layer of ignorance, but we do have these institutions, and there is a possibility of changing the conversation. There actually really is, because most people are ignorant.
34:49They're not malicious. It's about becoming first to market in somebody's brain.
34:54Coleman Hughes:So you've been critical of Holocaust remembrance education. Yes. I want to understand that because it seems to me remembering the Holocaust is very important for multiple reasons. I've been to Yad Vashem and had the experience of, you know, and I've never been a huge museum guy, but it really is. You really picked a fun one. Well, but it did everything a museum should do. It was so much more than a pornography of atrocity. I came out really understanding more richly what the Holocaust was. And none of it felt as if it was being crammed down your throat. It was just a brilliant example of, you know, to me, everyone should have that experience.
35:44Coleman Hughes:So when you criticize Holocaust remembrance, what is it that your critique consists in? Yes, I want to be really clear. I am not against Holocaust education. this is often a straw man made against you know when people are like Dara Horn hates Holocaust education like no this is not true it's there's I think 20 28 states in this country that mandate Holocaust education in schools I want to be super clear it should be 50 I it should be 50 especially now when you know we're there's you know Holocaust denials had this resurgence there's this total ignorance of history I mean history education in this country has gone down the toilet.
36:25I am not arguing against Holocaust education. What I found disturbing about Holocaust education, and in the book I talk about this, I mean, I spent about a year of my life researching Holocaust education in America, which is a very different project than what you saw at Yad Vashem. I mean, because Yad Vashem is like one room in a house, right? I mean, that's like, there's, you know, many other things you're learning about the Jewish people, the nation of Israel, etc., etc., when you're on your trip to Israel. You're probably not only going to Yad Vashem. But as I mentioned, learning about the Holocaust is often the only thing that public school students in the United States will learn, or any non-Jewish students in the United States will learn about who Jews are.
37:06And what that means is, what I talk about in the book is what educators call the null curriculum, null like zero, like N-U-L-L. The null curriculum is an idea that what's not taught in schools is also part of the curriculum. because you're signaling to students, you're not saying don't learn this, you're saying don't learn it from me, like sex education a few generations ago, right? They're not, teachers weren't saying don't learn about sex, they were saying learn about it from your older brother's porn magazines, right? That was the message the schools were sending. What I think is interesting about this is that Jews have been placed in the null curriculum, right?
37:46The only thing, if the only, And what that means is that we have outsourced everything about who Jews are. Everything we're going to teach about who Jews are has been outsourced to TikTok. And we're living with the results. So, you know, if the only thing you learn in school about the Holocaust is that, you know, that's the only thing you know about Jews. Is Jews are people who were murdered in Europe between 1933 and 1945. And their murders were there to, you know, teach us some nice lesson about humanity. And then TikTok tells you Jews are white European colonizers who have no business in the Middle East and are like, you know, stealing land from, you know, righteous indigenous people.
38:24Like, that completely comports with what you learned in school. That fits exactly with what you learned in school. What's different than, you know, there's no challenge there. You've learned absolutely nothing else about Jews. So, you know, and I think that the deeper issue I have with it, though, is what I explore more in People Love Dead Jews, which is that there's this implication that Jews are only presentable to a non-Jewish public when they have no power, whether that means they're politically impotent or dead. And to me, that is sort of, you know, that is ultimately the way that non-Jewish societies are most comfortable presenting Jews.
39:08And that is this removal of agency, right? And what I think is so fascinating is the only reason Jews still exist now after thousands of years is because of choices that Jewish communities made against all odds over thousands and thousands of years.
39:24Coleman Hughes:So if we think about anti-Semitism in the way you've prescribed, as whatever society values, that's what Jews are said to be threatening. Yes. How do you view anti-Semitism from the political right as different than anti-Semitism from the political left? Are they equally worrisome to you, or do you worry more about one than the other? So I think that if you think there's right-wing anti-Semitism and left-wing anti-Semitism, you've already lost. Because they're the same. They're the same. And what I mean by that is, you know, look, if you look on, I mean, first of all, we see this in our current situation online where, like, people like Tucker Carlson and Hasan Piker, they're, like, retweeting each other.
40:17You know, I mean, like, you know, Tucker Carlson has a house in Doha. like everybody's got a house in Doha, right? I mean, like, you know, the idea that this is, like, some difference, you know, that there's, like, oh, there's this over here and that over here, and the one that's the real problem is whoever I didn't vote for, you know? I mean, I think this is something self-protective that people do. And I want to also point out that historically, you know, you have this virulence that spans the political spectrum and almost is, it's not even horseshoe theory. It's a circle. Can I give just one story about illustrating this?
40:51Please. Yeah, so this is a story I tell in the book about a Nazi officer that probably, unless you've read this book, you probably never heard of him, is a man named Johann von Lehrs. This was a Nazi ideologue. He published like 27 books about Nazi ideology. He wrote all the curricula for all the schools of the Third Reich. The only interesting thing about this man is what happened to him after World War II. In 1945, he escaped. He did not face justice. He was like, you know, second to Goebbels and Himmler, but he did not face justice. He escaped first to Argentina and then to Egypt, where in the 1950s, he was hired by the Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser to write anti-Israel propaganda for the entire Arab League.
41:38their school curricula all their broadcasts everything about anti-zionist anti-arab propaganda and he did that for the rest of his life he like lived through until the 1960s and he died in the 1960s having converted to islam by hajameen al-hussaini the mufti of jerusalem who converted him to islam and then his material also gets translated into russian by the soviets who then use it as part of their anti-zionist campaign in the 1960s which is all the slogans we still hear today. Zionism is racism. Zionism is colonialism. Zionism is apartheid. Zionism is genocide. It's like, it's not horseshoe theory when it's one person, right?
42:17So, you know, I think that, like, this entire frame of, like, right wing and left wing, and they need different approaches, like, nope, it's all the same. It's the lie. Jews are destroying what you value the most. Like, it's really that simple. And to me, the way you fight a lie is not through, you know, empathy. It's through exposure. It is through exposure, pre-bunking, telling people to anticipate this lie and to be able to recognize it when it's infesting their phone.
42:51Coleman Hughes:So we're now going to go to some audience questions. Someone writes, Alana Newhouse at Tablet has an idea. She had a great essay to this effect. that Western societies are losing touch with their ethnos and what makes their identity and society something to admire. And that drives hate, I would add, via envy, hate via envy towards Israel and Israelis slash Zionists who are in touch with their ethnos and what makes their specific particular identity something to admire. How do you think about the tension or need for American Jews specifically to advocate for what makes us great and not sure what the end of that says.
43:35Coleman Hughes:Great and cool. Great and cool. Well, I wouldn't argue that we're cool, but I think we're at the height of uncool for the last several thousand years. Maybe that is what makes you cool. The uncool. Willingness to be uncool. I don't know. I've never been cool. I couldn't say. But, you know, I think that, you know, I I thought her essay was great. I think it's, what's so interesting to me is that there has been this strategy of self-erasure in diaspora Jewish communities that traces back thousands of years. I could give many examples of this. But this is a self-preservation strategy that people don't even realize that they're participating in this.
44:15And this is part of what brought us this so-called golden age of American Jews that we now are lamenting is coming to an end. And I write in the book about how that was really brought to us not by this magic of, like, oh, after World War II, people felt bad about the Holocaust. The way it happened was through American Jewish activism, you know, in fighting discrimination. And one of the ways that American Jewish activists at the time fought discrimination was by saying that people had to, by taking what was at that time called a colorblind approach to discrimination. They actually often worked with black American groups that were obviously fighting a much bigger battle against legal segregation.
44:52But the idea was like basically to allow you to not be Jewish in public was the standard. Like basically making it a legal for someone to ask if you were Jewish at a job interview, for example. And that was the victory. That you would not be asked your religion on a job application. If you changed your name in court, they wouldn't ask for your father's name on a job application, that sort of thing. Think about what that meant to call that victory. Calling that victory is like, don't ask, don't tell. For gay service members in the US military 15 years ago, ultimately gay rights advocates saw that don't ask, don't tell was itself homophobic because it's accommodating homophobia.
45:38is basically saying, let's figure out a way to not upset the homophobes. That's what this was. It was basically finding a way for Jews to pass. And that is so ingrained in a lot of American Jews because this is our heritage as American Jews. But I think Alana is really correct that there is an absence in a lot of broader American culture. And I actually, here's where I see this the most, is actually in the anti-Israel movement. And I talk about this in the book. I often do events at college campuses where, you know, often it will happen that some, usually the way I think of it, it's like, you know, it's like the white non-Jewish kid in a keffiyeh who gets up and like heckles you at events.
46:22Maybe this happens to you too, I don't know. But probably, you're like, not, you know. I've seen it. Maybe, yep, yeah. And, you know, I actually, you know, I'm a mother of four teenagers, so I'm not scared of teenagers. And so when these people would come up to me and they'd be heckling me with their, I felt sorry for them. Because I look at them and I thought, wow, you don't have anything from your own culture to wear. Right? I'm like, you don't have a way to like go to, you know, somewhere once a week where you can sit in a circle and bang on a table and chant meaningful words that make you feel part of a story that matters.
47:00Like, my kids do that every Shabbos. Right? It's like, but you know, it's like, they can't do that. You know, it's like if only, you know, they can't go to Chabad. So instead, you know, they have like this other thing they do. And it's like people are searching for that kind of community and historical consciousness and wanting to be part of a bigger story. And unfortunately, that's something that unfortunately a lot of our broader culture doesn't give us. And I think Alana's point, like, you know, everyone should be a Zionist, meaning not a Zionist specifically, you know, a person who supports Israel specifically, but everyone should be a person who's part of this culture.
47:37And, you know, we've lost a lot of that, I think, in a broader American culture, of feeling that sense of community and connection to the past and the future.
47:44Coleman Hughes:Yeah, I think it was Bill Maher who said that, you know, the greatest mistake Democrats ever made in this country is to make the flag a Republican Party symbol. Yes. To cede that ground. Yes. So that Democrats feel a little bit embarrassed to fly a flag over their home. Yes. You know? This next question is something I think many people in the room will resonate with. It's probably the most frequent question I get from my podcast audience. I'm losing or have lost friends, good people, who fall for the current bombardment from the media. What should I do? Yes. This is a tough one. You know, look, I feel, I don't blame anyone who, you know, it's funny, I was doing an interview with someone else recently, it was someone in Europe who was saying, like, I feel like my friends have been bitten by a zombie.
48:43And it's like, once they're bitten by the zombie, it's like, they're like, sorry, can't talk to you anymore, I was bitten by the zombie. Right? It's like, it's like, suddenly, like, we can't be friends anymore. And, you know, I think that, I don't blame anyone who falls for what I call the lie. because it's almost impossible not to, because this is what's coming at you all day long. You don't pay for TikTok, you don't pay for Instagram, that means you're the product. Very few people question that, and very few people think, suddenly a lot of my news comes from Al Jazeera. Why is that my main source of news?
49:22Nobody ever really thinks about that. They're just watching whatever video comes through their feed. And 20 years ago, or 10 years ago, nobody was watching a news network from foreign countries. That was not common. And now it's like, whatever's on my phone is on my phone. Here it is. I don't pay for TikTok. I don't pay for Instagram. But to answer, so the question about, but what do you do when this is, and this is one thing when it's somebody heckling you at an event, but what do you do when it's someone in your life? You know, look, I don't think that the approach is to try to, like, deprogram someone, which you probably are not going to succeed at anyway.
50:01But to me, and this is one of the things that I talk about in the book, to me the opposite of love isn't hate, it's curiosity. It is curiosity. It is the willingness to approach something unfamiliar with interest rather than fear or contempt. And I think that we need to model that in our friendships and our relationships. So the way I would approach someone who's in this position is to ask them questions. In other words, not to tell them, like, oh, here's 10 reasons why you're wrong. Because that's not going to work, number one. They're just going to shut down. But also, it's the relationship that matters.
50:43And also, what you're doing is opening up space for curiosity, which is what has been lost. Right? The unquestioning piece is what's been lost. So to even ask people, you know, I'm curious, where did you hear that? Where did you come up with that idea? And I remember you telling me this.
51:02Coleman Hughes:It can be a very powerful question because if I just said, well, you know, the algebra is Jewish and they put the letters in the math to bedazzle us. Well, where did you hear that? Well, yeah, it was this guy on Tucker Carlson's podcast. Well, what were his credentials? Was he a mathematician? Well, no, he was a landscaper. And it's just, as you say it out loud, you increasingly, obviously that's a little bit of a caricature, right? But... But it's a lot of things are like that when you review it. Even the more realistic version of that conversation gets a person to actually back into the fact that they're not an expert on the subject.
51:45Coleman Hughes:They probably saw a convincing two-minute TikTok reel. Basically, yes. At most, they read probably one article from a news source that they could be easily made to see could be biased, right? Is it possible that that news source could be biased? It's great to frame things as a question, as you said, because a question tells your friend or loved one the subtext, I'm interested in what you have to say. Correct. And the subtext in communication, as we know from relationships, at least the wiser among us know or learn very quickly is just as important as the text, whereas telling someone here's why you're wrong, that's the exact opposite subtext.
52:27Coleman Hughes:I don't care what you have to say. You couldn't possibly have anything to say that is interesting to me, right? So framing things as a question, is it possible that source could have been biased? Again, possibility is a really important threshold to put there because it's... It's a low threshold. It's a low threshold. It's a low threshold. Yes. And it really is what we are operating with. Most of us normal people, we're not spending 10 hours a day chasing the footnote to the footnote to the footnote and then contacting the initial source that said that the Israeli guard trained a dog to pee on whoever, right?
53:03Coleman Hughes:So we're all operating in this information landscape where we are just trusting sources that seem trustworthy to us. And yet we know that even the hallowed halls of the New York Times can literally put a quote-unquote starving child on the front page who is in fact not a starving child. His brother who is not starving is cropped out of the frame. And so we know that those, if you want to call them not-so-innocent mistakes that always go in one direction, we know that happens all over the place. And so if you can use questions in a tone of curiosity rather than attack to unspool that for your friend or family member, it's not necessarily going to convince them, but you're going to be able to air that argument in a way more constructive way.
53:53Coleman Hughes:And that's not something I'm inventing. I had Daryl Davis on my podcast recently who has the distinction of having deprogrammed over 200 neo-Nazis and white supremacists as a black man. And I said, how do you talk to these people, Daryl? And he goes, well, first of all, do not try to convince them. Lose that expectation when you walk in the door. And then you're just asking questions, right? So I think that's very important. And I think it's something also that comes so deep in Jewish civilization. When I talked about what are the aspects of Jewish civilization that dominant cultures perceive as a threat, one of those things is debate, civil discourse, and dissent.
54:36in Jewish civilization, we train children to ask questions. And I mean, that is to me something that also, you know, broader American culture can learn from as well.
54:47Coleman Hughes:Yeah. Okay. One of the questions, what about the issue within the Jewish community about those Jews who perpetrate anti-Israel narratives or voices? This person is thinking in particular of Jewish New Yorkers that say voted for Mamdani or like his stance on Israel, which he totally didn't care about in the primary, or rather in the campaign, and now is obsessed with. Yes. You know, look, as I said, this is a community that has always had dissenting voices. I mean, that's, you know, two Jews, three opinions is not just a joke. It is part of Jewish tradition. You know, the reason the Talmud is 3 ,000 pages long is because it includes everyone's opinions and not just the people who won the argument.
55:32So, you know, those people who don't agree are always part of the community. And you're not going to find a Jewish community where everyone agrees. Like, we don't have a Pope. We don't have an Ayatollah. So, which is why it always annoys me when people are like, you know, why isn't the Jewish community as good at, like, messaging? You know, we need a better PR, blah, blah. I'm like, you know, it's really easy to stay on message when you kill the people who don't stay on message. So, you know, we're not doing that. So we're at a disadvantage. Yeah. Yeah, so hats off to people who are on many different messages.
56:04But what I will say is that I think that there's a misunderstanding about the history of anti-Zionism, which I talk about in the book, I bring it back to its origins, which the first anti-Zionist tract, the first anti-Zionist text in world history is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, right, this forged document that was pretending to be about this cabal of Jews who are plotting to take over the world. Protocols of the Elders of Zion is created by the Russian secret police in 1903. It is written in response to the world Zionist congresses that had then been happening for the previous six years.
56:47So, I mean, that is an anti-Zionist text. The only thing I will say about Jews who are taking this position of, you know, and it's one thing you can say, oh, Jews were always debating about Zionism. I'm like, you know, that was a fun thing to debate in 1920, right, when it was a fun hypothetical. It's a really different thing to debate in 2026 when there is a country which is where half the world's Jews live. The thing I will say about people who take this position is that Jews who are anti-Zionists are coming from a position of almost unfathomable privilege. Almost unfathomable privilege. because you can have a fun hypothetical conversation in a Harvard seminar room or at a New York dinner party about maybe Israel should open up its borders and see what happens.
57:41Like you can't have that fun hypothetical conversation. You don't have that privilege when you are living in Israel and you saw on October 7th exactly what happens when Israel opens up its borders. This is not a fun hypothetical conversation you're going to have in a bomb shelter. And so I think that it is, yes, we have all these rich opinions in our community, and I think what is really remarkable about this one is the almost unfathomable level of privilege that comes with it and makes it possible.
58:10Coleman Hughes:Okay, Dara, final question. What is the final solution to the Jewish question? Do I want to ruin the book and spoil the ending? You know, I actually do come to an answer in this book. And I spoke earlier about how Jewish civilization has always been this anti-tyrannical movement for thousands of years. This is a community that, even when it was at the highest possible cost, does not bow to tyrants. Does not bow to tyrants. And that is something that requires courage. It requires courage to be a Jew because you are living in a world where everyone around you is going to disagree with you on many, many things that are most important to you.
58:57And when you are a person raising Jewish children, you are raising them to understand that you're going to be living in a world where most people around you don't agree with you. And that is a model for being a person in the world. That is a model for courage and integrity. and every person who's Jewish today is here and is Jewish because of people in the past, and in some cases for people who are Jews by choice it's themselves, and for each of us, everyone today is essentially a Jew by choice. Or it's people somewhere in your family's past who made this unbelievably difficult counter-cultural choice not to bow to tyrants.
59:44the people who don't bow to tyrants are the final solution, and they always will be. And I hope all of you will be inspired to be part of the solution.
1:00:03Coleman Hughes:Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Dara. All right, thank you. This was great.
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From the publisher
Dara Horn is a novelist and essayist whose book People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present examined how contemporary culture sentimentalizes Jewish suffering while ignoring the fullness of Jewish life. Her new book, provocatively titled The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living, goes further, arguing that antisemitism isn’t an ordinary bigotry at all. It’s a lie, always the same lie in different disguises, that Jews are destroying whatever a given society values most. Recorded live onstage at the 92nd Street Y, New York City’s largest Jewish cultural center, she and Coleman Hughes cover why nobody, apparently including a sitting vice president, understands basic antisemitic terms like “blood libel,” and why she thinks curiosity, not debate, is the real antidote to losing a friend to conspiracy theories.
The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.
For the first time in nearly a year, our Bari Weiss is returning to the stage for a rare sit-down discussion with renowned historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. The event is happening on October 1st in New York City. Limited tickets are on sale now at
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