BONUS - Dara Horn: The answer to the Jewish question
The Times of Israel Daily Briefing
The Times of Israel
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
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Summary
Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan, speaking with author and scholar Dara Horn.
Horn visited ToI's Jerusalem studio while on a break from this year’s International Writers Festival in Jerusalem, taking place May 25-28 at the city’s Mishkenot Sha’ananim cultural center
An author of novels and non-fiction, including “People Love Dead Jews,” “Eternal Life,” “A Guide for the Perplexed,” Horn's latest book -- her first for young readers -- is “One Little Goat.”
Her newest nonfiction work will be published by Simon & Schuster in September under the title, "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living."
We hear about how, after Horn published her bestselling work, "People Love Dead Jews," readers asked her for the solution to this problem. This week, she speaks about her new education initiative, Tell, which is bent on teaching American schoolchildren about real, living Jews, and Jewish culture.
To launch the wide-ranging conversation, Horn defines terms, explaining that Jews are not a religion, but a people with a religion. This difference, she states, is massive and must be internalized to understand the millennia of hate experienced by the Jewish people.
Since the Hamas onslaught on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and the resultant retaliatory war in Gaza, there has been an outsized focus on the trend of "non-Zionist" or "anti-Zionist" Jews. Who are these Jews -- and are they significant in the chronicles of Jewish history?
And so, this week, we ask author Dara Horn, what matters now?
What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee.
IMAGE: AP
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Times of Israel's What Matters Now, a weekly podcast delving into one issue of facing |
| 0:09.5 | Israel and the Jewish world right now. I'm your host, Amanda Borschalda. And this week joined in |
| 0:14.9 | our Jerusalem studio by author Dara Horne. Darrah, thank you so much for joining me today. |
| 0:19.7 | Thank you for having me. |
| 0:25.8 | It is such a pleasure. And you know what is even more pleasurable is that I didn't have to do any homework for this conversation. You have a book coming out in September, but I haven't received it |
| 0:32.1 | yet. Yes, no one's read it yet. So we can talk about it a little bit without me having to actually do the homework assignment. |
| 0:39.9 | It's so freeing. |
| 0:41.3 | Dara, thank you so much. |
| 0:42.8 | Thank you. |
| 0:43.3 | Well, and it's also delightful to be here. |
| 0:45.3 | You and I have spoken before, but only over Zoom. |
| 0:47.2 | And so it's wonderful to meet you in three dimensions and to be here in person in Jerusalem. |
| 0:51.6 | It's absolutely a delight. |
| 0:53.2 | When I heard you were coming for the Writers |
| 0:55.4 | Festival, which is going on right now, I reached out immediately and I said, okay, we need to |
| 1:01.1 | actually meet the topic. I don't think we actually know what we're going to talk about. That's okay. |
| 1:05.8 | I think hair and nails. Basically, sure. That's fine. Yeah, kids recipes. Exactly. |
| 1:10.7 | Right. So just to mention the topic of |
| 1:13.5 | the title of your book, it is, I wrote it down because I have a terrible memory. Though the |
| 1:18.4 | title is so memorable, that that's the first thing we're going to talk about. It's called |
| 1:22.7 | The Final Solution to the Jewish Question, a love story for the living. So obviously, this piggybacks |
| 1:30.0 | off of a previous book that you wrote about people loving dead Jews, for example. Oh, yes. |
... |
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