Look, I'm not saying Dara Horn's the best thing that's ever happened to literature, and she certainly has her limitations (I'd agree that her characterization is lacking, and her prose is often pretty wooden, too)... but what I wrote is that she's an example of the breadth of material there is for a young Jewish writer to draw from, provided he/she is smart enough. Horn is a fluent speaker of Yiddish and Hebrew, understands the history of Yiddish-speaking Jews in America and Eastern Europe, and makes some valiant attempts to share that knowledge with her readers (most of whom I assume are too lazy to spend the time it takes to learn to read Yiddish). If you actually read her latest novel, you'll see that she's not pro-Chagall; her whole point is that it's one of the tragedies of the 20th century that Yiddish writers like Der Nister get forgotten while idiots like Chagall get rich and famous. I agree with you that it's unfortunate that the only way she can find to package this valuable stuff is in unconvincing and artificial narratives, at least so far. But if you want something other than "easily digestible dipshit nuggets of mythological jewish culture," you're going to need people, like Horn, who have spent the time to read through the archives in Yiddish and other languages, because the real thing isn't available in anthologies or in translation. Shaping that knowledge and perspective into lasting art is the next step, and it ain't easy; but at least Horn's giving it a real shot. That's more than can be said for a lot of the navel-gazing idiots with book deals.