![]() ![]() ![]() If Jews were to tell the truth about why Karolchouk became Carroll, or (in my mother’s case) Greenberg became Green, they’d be “confirming two enormous fears: first, that this country doesn’t really accept you, and second, that the best way to survive and thrive is to dump any outward sign of your Jewish identity, and symbolically cut that cord that goes back to Mount Sinai. Horn explains this denial as a “deep pattern in Jewish history,” which is “all about living in places where you are utterly vulnerable and cannot admit it.” Instead of fessing up to that vulnerability and their culpability in bowing to it, many Jews prefer to invent more benign “origin stories,” either to exonerate their non-Jewish neighbors or spare themselves and their children the “humiliation” that the new country is no more friendly to Jews than the one they left. What Horn didn’t count on was the anger of her audiences, who insisted that their grandparents and great-grandparents were passive victims of a clerk’s pen. The cold fury and in-your-face phrasing of the title of acclaimed novelist Horn's essay collection sets the tone for this brilliantly readable yet purposefully disturbing book. NOTE! Consider delaying until first div on pageĮllis island 298.88US Library of Congress 7, 2021 A guided tour of the hypocrisy that serves as the mechanism by which antisemitism rages on unchecked. If (slot) slot.addService(googletag.pubads()) (function (a, d, o, r, i, c, u, p, w, m) No one lost their Jewish last name at Ellis Island. ![]()
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