Jewish Masculinities

by Baader, Benjamin Maria; Gillerman, Sharon; Lerner, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780253002068
• ISBN10: 0253002060
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-07-18
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

Stereotyped as delicate and feeble intellectuals, Jewish men in German-speaking lands in fact developed a rich and complex spectrum of male norms, models, and behaviors. Jewish Masculinities explores conceptions and experiences of masculinity among Jews in Germany from the 16th through the late 20th century as well as emigrants to North America, Palestine, and Israel. The volume examines the different worlds of students, businessmen, mohels, ritual slaughterers, rabbis, performers, and others, shedding new light on the challenge for Jewish men of balancing German citizenship and cultural affiliation with Jewish communal solidarity, religious practice, and identity.

Author Biography

Benjamin Maria Baader is Associate Professor of European History and co-coordinator of the Judaic Studies Program at the University of Manitoba. He is author of Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800-1870 (IUP, 2006). Sharon Gillerman is Associate Professor of Jewish History and Director of the Edgar F. Magnin School of Graduate Studies at Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles. She is author of Germans into Jews: Remaking the Jewish Social Body in the Weimar Republic. Paul Lerner is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies at University of Southern California. He is author of Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry, and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890-1930.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction German Jews, Gender, and History	p. 1
Respectability Tested Male Ideals, Sexuality, and Honor in Early Modern Ashkenazi Jewry	p. 23
Jewish Difference and the Feminine Spirit of Judaism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Germany	p. 50
Moral, Clean Men of the Jewish Faith Jewish Rituals Their Male Practitioners, 1843-1914	p. 72
A Soft Hero Male Jewish Identity in Imperial Germany through the Autobiography of Aron Liebeck	p. 90
Performing Masculinity Jewish Students and the Honor Code at German Universities	p. 114
Whose Body Is It Anyway? Hermaphrodites, Gays, and Jews in N. O. Body's Germany	p. 138
Toward a Theory of the Modern Hebrew Handshake The Conduct of Muscle Judaism	p. 152
Friedrich Gundolf and Jewish Conservative Bohemianism in the Weimar Republic	p. 186
A Kinder Gentler Strongman? Siegmund Breitbart in Eastern Europe	p. 197
Family Matters German Jewish Masculinities among Nazi Era Refugees	p. 210
List of Contributors	p. 233
Index	p. 235
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