Jewish Masculinity Research Articles

‘Shultsloze Ferpeynikte Neshomes’ – ‘Vulnerable, Tormented Souls’: Gendered Wounds, Sexualized Violence, and Jewish Masculinity in the Yiddish Testimonies of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau

ABSTRACT This article focuses on an eyewitness account titled ‘Di 3000 Nakete’ – ‘The 3000 Naked Ones’ by Leyb Langfus, which is part of the Yiddish testimonies of the Sonderkommando. My case study aims to engage with the issues of gendered violence (sexualized, physical, psychological, and spiritual) and the male gaze. The article explores the dynamics between the male Sonderkommando members and the female prisoners, arguing that the men responded to the tormented women within the context of their Jewish masculinity. This response was ambiguous and contradictory, communicating their power as well as their despair and powerlessness. Narratives of Jewish masculinity during the Khurbm often neglect to evaluate the range of Jewish male victims’ responses and choices. In his text, Langfus aims to comprehend the mental and emotional conditions in which the Sonderkommando prisoners and the female prisoners found themselves, illustrating the interactions between the two groups. I argue that the Yiddish Sonderkommando testimonies exemplify the intricate and ambivalent nature of Jewish masculinity. They provide a complex example of how gender influences one’s understanding of acts of violence, including the roles of both perpetrators and victims. The responses of the Jewish male Sonderkommando challenge our current perceptions and assumptions about Jewish masculinity during the Khurbm.

Gustav Mahler and the Crisis of Jewish Masculinity

Gustav Mahler and the Crisis of Jewish Masculinity

Nathan Meyer-Rothschild’s Reproduction of Business Masculinity in the Portrait A View from the Royal Exchange. A Historical, Bourdieusian and Visual Semiotic Exploration

Abstract Business Masculinity represents a distinctly English configuration of masculinity that was hegemonic in the City of London’s banking and finance industry until recently. This work uses visual semiotic analysis, historical analysis and Bourdieusian concepts to show how Rothschild reproduced the aesthetics of Business Masculinity in the portrait A View from the Royal Exchange (1817) by using clothing and other symbolic cultural capital. To secure his trajectory, Rothschild needed to align his identity with Business Masculinity and thus Englishness – and disassociate himself from Jewish masculinity – in a culture of antisemitism, as well as deal with the repercussions arising from his alleged manipulation of information about the Battle of Waterloo (1815). In this context, the portrait played a significant part in Rothschild’s public identity-management. Shortly after the portrait’s publication, Rothschild was trusted with key information and opportunities which were conducive to his enterprise growing exponentially. It is suggested that the portrait played a hitherto underacknowledged part in Rothschild’s trajectory, by disassociating Rothschild from Jewish masculinity and associating Rothschild with Business Masculinity.

Chastening Germany: Graetz’s Lusty Jew And Asexual Jewess As Semitic Saviors

Abstract Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891), the famous historian and biblical exegete, penned his commentary to the Song of Songs in 1871 to counter rising antisemitism fueled by racialized fantasies of Jewish gender and sexuality. Graetz contested antisemitic tropes of Jewish masculinity and femininity by reconfiguring the Song of Songs, this most blatantly erotic book of scripture, as a testament to and celebration of Jewish chastity. Against the lascivious femme fatal, Graetz introduced the tender Sulamit, whose paradigmatic chastity renders romantic ardor into asexual, sisterly affection. In contrast to the effeminate Jew, Graetz introduced the Friend, a brawny adventurer whose masculine attempt at chastity only reveals his sexual potency. Graetz leverages the co-constitutive relationships among gender, class, and race to bestow on these figures not only the bourgeois virtues connoted by their chastity, but also associations of whiteness and middle-class belonging. Graetz’s exegetical construction of new models of Jewish femininity and masculinity was no mere theoretical exercise, but a response to matters of life and death as the rise of sexually transmitted diseases coalesced into a public health crisis. With the specter of syphilis in the background, Graetz’s commentary to the Song of Songs proffered German Jews—and German Christians—a Semitic path to redemption from the immorality crippling fin-de-siècle Germany.

Hebrew Gothic: History and the Poetics of Persecution

Hebrew Gothic: History and the Poetics of Persecution

Jewish, Masculine, and Professional: Intersections of Profession and Masculinity in Yoshue Perle’s Novellas “Gelt” and “Nayn a zeyger inderfri”

Abstract This article explores “Nayn a zeyger inderfri” and “Gelt,” two novellas by the Polish- Jewish Yiddish author Yoshue Perle. These novellas feature first-generation Jewish middle-class men who anxiously struggle to perform according to the bourgeois masculine standards that their new class positioning requires. The article argues that Perle creates a narrative where Jewish masculinities come into direct interaction with non-Jewish bourgeois masculinities. While debates about Jewish masculinity often take “Torah study” or “productivity” as primary examples for thinking through appropriate activities for Jewish men, I suggest that a bank or a factory office is also a site for the negotiation of what constitutes ideal, failed, or proper masculine behavior. The article proposes a more nuanced approach to the study of Jewish masculinities, which would not be limited to looking at the intersection of gender and ethnicity, but would include class as another major factor.

Black Masculinities and Jewish Identity: Ethiopian-Israeli Men in Contemporary Art

The identity of Jewish-Israeli men of Ethiopian descent has undergone deep-seated changes in the last decade, as evident in visual representations created by contemporary black artists living in Israel. In recent years, a new generation of Ethiopian-Israeli artists has revitalized local art and engendered deep changes in discourse and public life. Ethiopian-Israelis, who comprise less than two percent of the total Jewish population in the country, suffers multiple forms of oppression, especially due to their religious status and given that their visibility—as black Jews—stands out in a society that is predominantly white. This article draws links between events of the past decade and the images of men produced by these artists. It argues that the political awareness of Jewish-Ethiopians artists, generated by long-term social activism as well as police violence against their community, has greatly impacted their artistic production, broadened its diversity, and contributed a wealth of artworks to Israeli culture as a whole. Using intersectional analysis and drawing on theories from gender, migration and cultural studies, the article aims to produce a nuanced understanding of black Jewish masculinity in the ethno-national context of the state of Israel.

"Husky Jewish Boys": The Jewish Defense League and the Project of American Jewish Masculinity

"Husky Jewish Boys": The Jewish Defense League and the Project of American Jewish Masculinity

La figure du luftmentsh, « Juif flottant » : étude de cas d’un personnage économique

The Yiddish word “luftmentsh”, literally “air-person”, refers to petty traders, peddlers, beggars and paupers. The word appeared for the first time in Yiddish literature in the 1860s and began to be used by economists and statisticians in the 1880s-1890s. The case of the luftmentsh is particularly interesting because of the interplay of religion, gender, antisemitism, and economics. This article focuses on the term luftmentsh in economic and statistical discourse in the first part of the twentieth century as a case study of the fundamental intertwining of economics and literature. We characterize the luftmentsh as an “economic character”, i.e. as an economic-statistical category associated with a complex imaginary borrowed from Yiddish literature. We show that this economic character popularized an influential yet ambivalent image of Jewish masculinity at work, as well as offering a way to reconsider antisemitism in the history of economic thought.

Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust

Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust

Book Review

Book Review

Stephen Dwoskin: The Feminist Gaze and Postwar Jewish Masculinity

Stephen Dwoskin: The Feminist Gaze and Postwar Jewish Masculinity

"Portnoy's Complaint at 50": A Podcast About Roth's Most Infamous Book

"Portnoy's Complaint at 50"A Podcast About Roth's Most Infamous Book Brett Ashley Kaplan (bio) and Samuel J. Kessler (bio) Readers of this special issue might be interested in "portnoy's complaint at 50," an episode in the podcast series Adventures in Jewish Studies, produced by the Association of Jewish Studies. In this episode, Jeremy Shere interviews literary scholars Warren Hoffman, Josh Lambert, and Brett Ashley Kaplan to discuss the hilarity and the controversy surrounding Philip Roth's most famous novel as it turns 50 years old. When published in early 1969, Portnoy's Complaint was an immediate sensation, selling thousands of copies and rocketing to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, turning Roth into an overnight celebrity. Critics loved the book. Reviewing Portnoy's Complaint for the Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt judged the novel "Roth's best work […] and a brilliantly vivid reading experience." But not everyone was so enthralled. Many Jewish readers, including rabbis and other leaders of the Jewish community, were scandalized by the novel's unsparing, satirical depictions of overbearing Jewish mothers and their sex-obsessed sons. And feminist critics, too, took Roth to task for what they saw as his misogynistic portrayal of female characters, not only in this novel but throughout his writings. The guests discuss all these historical reactions and more. As Kaplan explores, we might alternately consider how Portnoy's central love interest, the sexually liberated and nearly illiterate Mary Jane Reed (whom Portnoy calls "the monkey"), embodies what feminist critics call "consent culture." Hoffman describes the book's portrayal of Jewish masculinity as queer, meaning that Portnoy's sexual neuroses and behavior are outside the norm. Hoffman reads Portnoy as reacting against the stereotype of the hysterical Jewish male to assert his identity as a red-blooded, sexually normative American man. And Josh Lambert notes that, going back to Yiddish literature of the nineteenth century, writers have thought about what it means to be Jewish through the lens of who a particular character is going to sleep with. In this way, diasporism becomes a kind of masturbation, and Israel induces impotence, so issues of continuity and Jewish identity come in through the sexuality of the book. [End Page 131] Finally, as the guests describe, 1969 was a cauldron of everything exciting happening at once. The world was undergoing a major transformation, and right at that moment appears a book that basically puts intimate details that are normally not seen on the printed page outside of pornography into the public realm. And people start talking about it. People start feeling that it represents some part of their own experience. Portnoy's Complaint taps into a vein of sexual repression and longing in mid-century America. Adventures in Jewish Studies takes listeners on exciting journeys that explore a wide range of topics featuring the expertise and learning of scholars of Jewish Studies. The Association of Jewish Studies is the largest learned society and professional organization representing Jewish Studies across the globe, with over 1,800 members from more than 30 countries. Find this episode wherever you get your podcasts. [End Page 132] Brett Ashley Kaplan Brett Ashley Kaplan directs the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies at the University of Illinois where she is a professor of Comparative and World Literature and Director of Graduate Studies. She publishes in Haaretz, The Conversation, Salon.com (picked up from Conversation), Asitoughttobemagazine, AJS Perspectives, Contemporary Literature, Edge Effects, and The Jewish Review of Books. She has been interviewed on NPR, the AJS Podcast, and The 21st, and is the author of Unwanted Beauty, Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory, and Jewish Anxiety and the Novels of Philip Roth. She is the editor of the forthcoming Handbook to New Approaches in Cultural Memory Studies, and co-editor of the collection in process: Blewish: Contemporary Black-Jewish Voices. Her first novel, Rare Stuff, is due out in June 2022. Samuel J. Kessler Samuel J. Kessler is Assistant Professor of Religion and Åke and Kristina Bonnier Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. His work focuses on the interaction of religion and modernity in European history and literature...

From Schlemiel to Sabra: Zionist Masculinity and Palestinian Hebrew Literature by Philip Hollander

Reviewed by: From Schlemiel to Sabra: Zionist Masculinity and Palestinian Hebrew Literature by Philip Hollander Lina Tuschling Hollander, Philip. From Schlemiel to Sabra: Zionist Masculinity and Palestinian Hebrew Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. In From Schlemiel to Sabra, Philip Hollander offers a nuanced and well-researched view on the emergence of Zionist masculinity in the years prior to statehood. A scholar of Israeli literature and culture, Hollander shows that a counter to the dominant narrative of the emergence of Zionist Israeli masculinity, the sabra identity, was developing concurrently: self-evaluative masculinity. With Jewish communities facing existential threats in Europe and Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, the need arrived for reenvisioning Jewish [End Page 435] identity that was consistent with Zionist ideals of establishing Israeli statehood and active self-defense. Gender played a crucial role in this attempted transformation in the literary works, as Hollander shows: "Agnon was employing gendered representations to communicate his belief that the Jewish people were in crisis. Portrayed as feminized, the Jewish people needed to undergo change to survive and thrive" (63). The "new Jew" was defined in contrast to the diasporic Jew and focused largely on redefining the Jewish man. The Yiddish word schlemiel describes the diasporic Jew as "an awkward, clumsy person, a blunderer; a 'born loser'; a 'dope' or 'drip'" (3). While there was consensus in the Jewish communities about the need to transform perceptions and, importantly, self-perceptions of the Jewish man in Palestine, little research has investigated the lesser-known strands of the cultural transformation attempts. The dominant perception of Jewish (Israeli) masculinity rests on the sabra identity, at the core the body centered ideal image of a stereotypically masculine fighter willing to fight and die for his country and nation. Focusing on self-evaluative masculinity, Hollander presents a form of Zionist masculinity that "did not achieve a hegemonic cultural position within the New Yishuv" (19). Shaped by homosocial relations and the willingness to include aspects of diasporic life into the new identity, self-evaluative masculinity stood in stark contrast to the sabra identity that sought a clear cut from life and identity in the diaspora. In the introduction, Hollander shares his own journey toward his keen interest in Hebrew literature in Palestine before Israeli statehood was realized. Together with the afterword, these two sections' focus on Jewish life and identity in contemporary Israel frame the discussion of the emergence of Jewish identity in Palestine. The five chapters in between examine the literary works of four influential authors: Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Yosef Hayyim Brenner, Levi Aryeh Arieli, and Aharon Reuveni. A brief biographical summary introduces these authors and puts their lives and works in the political and historical context, which is particularly useful for readers new to the realm of Hebrew Palestinian literature. Chapter titles reveal the different stages of the development of Zionist masculinity. The first chapter for example is titled "Holding Out for a Hero" and describes the existential threat to Jewish communities in the diaspora, the role gender and stereotypes played, and the need for the "new Jew." In the afterword Hollander examines the extent to which self-evaluative masculinity had a lasting impact on Israeli culture. Contrasting it to the popular sabra ideal, Hollander shines at showing the legacies of both. [End Page 436] The use of jargon makes parts of the book difficult to follow, particularly for readers less familiar with Israeli history. The few pictures of historical newspaper ads and articles are well chosen and complement the discussion extremely well but are used sparingly. While this book seems to be targeted at a niche audience, scholars of different disciplines would benefit from it. Foremost, those interested in understanding Israeli culture and how Israel's pre-statehood times and diasporic identity developments still influence society today will find this book very informative. Scholars of collective identities and cultural transformation processes will find Hollander's analysis enriching as well. Overall, the book is an informative, critical, and deep-diving account of gendered representation and shows that cultural transformation is not a single line but in fact a multi-stranded composite of different forces, narratives, and processes which can occur simultaneously. With the sabra...

Paul’s Defense: Masculinity and Authority in 2 Corinthians 10–13

In 2 Cor. 10–13, Paul tries to prove his authority as a reliable leader by using two different masculinity standards. Paul manifests his power and control over the Corinthian church members by using an image of paterfamilias (11.2-3; 12.14). Paternal control of others was an essential element of hegemonic masculinity in the Greco-Roman world. Moreover, Paul proves his manliness by revealing his endurance and submission to divine authority (11.21b–12.10) according to the Hellenistic Jewish masculinity. I argue that Paul is embedded in these different cultural assumptions regarding masculinity and that he refers to these assumptions to persuade Gentile and Jewish groups in the Corinthian church.

The Stereotypical Portrayal of Jewish Masculinity onTheBigBangTheory

The Stereotypical Portrayal of Jewish Masculinity on<i>The</i><i>Big</i><i>Bang</i><i>Theory</i>

Howard Jacobson by Howard Jacobson

Reviewed by: Howard Jacobson by Howard Jacobson Joshua Lander (bio) David Brauner. Howard Jacobson. Manchester University Press, 2020. 248 pp. $110.50, hardback, $104.97, ebook. Howard Jacobson has been repeatedly called the “English Philip Roth,” a comparison that has at times irked and irritated the British-Jewish writer. The comparison is not without merit, however, as Jacobson’s oeuvre oozes with the same (icky) corporeal masculinist gumption that emanates from Roth’s prose. David Brauner’s Howard Jacobson (2020) is the first monograph devoted to Jacobson and sets out to illuminate the “rich complexity and nuance of [Jacobson’s] work, rather than to pin its author down” (2). Brauner triumphantly brings into focus the importance, relevance, and aesthetic complexities of Jacobson’s writings. Ironically, Brauner’s criticism shines most brightly when he elucidates the Rothian intertextualisms dotted throughout Jacobson’s work. The book is structured thematically and is split into three chapters: “Being Funny” (Chapter 1), “Being Men” (Chapter 2), and “Being Jewish” (Chapter 3). Brauner’s task is tricky in that Jacobson has written extensively, having chalked up sixteen novels and five nonfiction texts. To compound matters, Jacobson’s literary outputs have been rather uneven in terms of quality, meaning Brauner has the unenviable task of analyzing (though not necessarily defending) some of Jacobson’s lesser fictions. To his credit, Brauner generously connects these works by stressing how Jacobson’s ideas develop from his weaker fictions and emerge more strongly in his better (and more successful) novels. Helpfully, for those unfamiliar with Jacobson, Brauner in his Afterword identifies five of Jacobson’s most “exceptional” (203) novels: The Very Model of a Man (1992), The Mighty Walzer (1999), Kalooki Nights (2006), J (2014), and Live a Little (2019) (he also gives an honorary mention to Peeping Tom [1984], Who’s Sorry Now? [2002], The Act of Love [2008], and The Finkler Question [2010]). The fact that this monograph only has three sections to discuss Jacobson’s long list of literary outputs means each of Brauner’s chapters is quite lengthy. Thankfully, however, Brauner’s writing, especially in Chapter 3, is engaging, nuanced, and insightful, even when the source material itself is laborious and plodding. [End Page 115] Jacobson, as Brauner discusses in his Introduction, is a divisive writer with divisive opinions. His (formerly held) views on student-lecturer relationships are dubious and he, like Roth, has been accused of misogyny. His books, like Roth’s, are (for the most part) heavily focused on Jewish masculinity, and his representation of women is problematic (to put it mildly). Brauner provides us with a detailed overview of Jacobson’s public persona(s) and reviews his contentious personal politics but thankfully resists in the book’s main body any impulse to locate the author within his characters. Instead, Brauner offers a robust and critically considerate overview of Jacobson’s literature. In Chapter 1, Brauner examines Jacobson’s deployment of the comedic, ranging from “light-hearted sexual farce to acerbic political satire” to an “anti-pastoral sensibility and a preoccupation with literary politics” (42). Brauner deftly outlines the anti-pastoralism of Jacobson’s two novels Coming from Behind (1983) and Peeping Tom but seems to shift away from this topic in his discussion of Redback (1986), an academic satire set in Australia. Nevertheless, Brauner is adroit in ensuring his book creates links between each of the texts he discusses. Chapter 2, “Being Men: Masculinity, Mortality and Sexual Politics,” provides a detailed and lengthy analysis of masculinism in Jacobson’s fiction. Brauner refutes any suggestion that Jacobson’s novels conform to ideals of heteronormative masculinity, instead arguing Jacobson’s fiction perennially reconstructs ideas of what it means to be a man. The chapter’s analysis of Live a Little stands out, as does its discussion of The Very Model of a Man. Both sections elucidate the vivacity and complexity of Jacobson’s writings and his nuanced depiction of masculinity. The third chapter, “Being Jewish: Philip Roth, Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” is the strongest of the three, and for readers of Philip Roth Studies, I suspect the most eye-catching. The chapter’s strength stems from Brauner’s theoretical approach and the texts he examines. He...

Gendering Jesus the Jew

Abstract Gendering Jesus has been a matter of divergent interpretations, ranging from emphasis on typical features of masculine power to ‘unmanly’ character by ancient elite standards. This article explores anew Jesus’ Jewish masculinity. It revisits a recent study of the question what Jesus looked like, by mutually reconsidering ancient literary and rhetorical traditions of description, literary data about Jesus’ physical and social appearance, major aspects in the literary record about Jesus the Jew in comparison with Jewish tradition including the Dead Sea Scrolls, and recent findings in iconography. Jesus the Jew comes off as an unconventional challenger of male power at the time, whose appearance would neither have adhered to elite standards of physical and social apparel nor to late antique adaptations through the Romanization of Christian iconography.

The "Malestrom" at Christie Pits: Jewish Masculinity and the Toronto Riot of 1933

The night of August 16, 1933 witnessed one of the most brutal riots in Canadian history. When Nazi sympathizers waved a swastika flag at a baseball game in Toronto’s Christie Pits park, Jewish players and spectators retaliated. For the next six hours, thousands of Jewish and gentile teenage boys attacked each other with unprecedented ferocity. As the issue of Jewish masculinity at Christie Pits has gone largely unexplored, two questions arise for the gender historian: to what extent did gender play a role in the actions of the Jewish rioters?; and how has gender shaped the way the riot is remembered in the Jewish community? This article argues that Jewish masculinity helped shape both the character and collective memory of the riot through the “macho-mensch” model, which highlighted the attributes of male physicality, ethics, and Jewish identity, and which excluded the role and commemoration of women.

Maddy Carey. Jewish Masculinity in the Holocaust: Between Destruction and Construction.

Maddy Carey. Jewish Masculinity in the Holocaust: Between Destruction and Construction.