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A review by serenaj
All Other Nights by Dara Horn
4.0
I am not ashamed to admit that I read this book in one day. One of my favorite ways to spend a summer afternoon is feverishly reading a captivating book, pausing occasionally to swim in Lake George. This is how I spent my Independence Day this year. All Other Nights is a pretty good story. I mean, an assassination at a Passover Seder?? That's definitely an original plot point. I found the central romance pretty typical, Jacob was an endearing, slightly blah character, but the Levy sisters were all so unique and fun to read about.
By far my favorite thing about this book was the subject: Jews in the Civil War. Specifically, a Jewish Union Spy assigned, among other things, to surveil the most notorious Jewish Confederate: Judah Benjamin. I can't believe I had never heard of him before. I had never thought about the Jewish Americans of the 1860s, and I'm so glad this book brought their perspective into my conscious. The anti-semitism some of the characters grapple with is juxtaposed with the fight against slavery in the most fascinating way, and it is just so interesting, as a modern American Jew, to consider how we were once slaves in the land of Egypt, and the factors that could drive one of us to commit the same evil done unto us all those centuries ago. This era affords us many privileges as Jews that are easy to forget, especially coming from a place like Newton. I am lucky in that anti-semitism is not something I worry about regularly. But in a different time, and as Horn writes it, someone like Judah Benjamin could feel so limited by American society that he would become Secretary of State of the CSA. Horn's book provides a window into a forgotten history that every American Jew should grapple with.
By far my favorite thing about this book was the subject: Jews in the Civil War. Specifically, a Jewish Union Spy assigned, among other things, to surveil the most notorious Jewish Confederate: Judah Benjamin. I can't believe I had never heard of him before. I had never thought about the Jewish Americans of the 1860s, and I'm so glad this book brought their perspective into my conscious. The anti-semitism some of the characters grapple with is juxtaposed with the fight against slavery in the most fascinating way, and it is just so interesting, as a modern American Jew, to consider how we were once slaves in the land of Egypt, and the factors that could drive one of us to commit the same evil done unto us all those centuries ago. This era affords us many privileges as Jews that are easy to forget, especially coming from a place like Newton. I am lucky in that anti-semitism is not something I worry about regularly. But in a different time, and as Horn writes it, someone like Judah Benjamin could feel so limited by American society that he would become Secretary of State of the CSA. Horn's book provides a window into a forgotten history that every American Jew should grapple with.