Full Description
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.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: German Jews, Gender, and History \ Paul Lerner, Benjamin Maria Baader, and Sharon Gillerman
1. Respectability Tested: Male Ideals, Sexuality, and Honor in Early Modern Ashkenazi Jewry \ Andreas Gotzmann
2. Jewish Difference and the Feminine Spirit of Judaism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Germany \ Benjamin Maria Baader
3. Moral, Clean Men of the Jewish Faith: Jewish Rituals and Their Male Practitioners, 1843-1914 \ Robin Judd
4. A Soft Hero: Male Jewish Identity in Imperial Germany through the Autobiography of Aron Liebeck \ Stefanie Schüler-Springorum
5. Performing Masculinity: Jewish Students and the Honor Code at German Universities \ Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker
6. Whose Body Is It Anyway? Hermaphrodites, Gays, and Jews in N. O. Body's Germany \ Sander L. Gilman
7. Toward a Theory of the Modern Hebrew Handshake: The Conduct of Muscle Judaism \ Etan Bloom
8. Friedrich Gundolf and Jewish Conservative Bohemianism in the Weimar Republic \ Ann Goldberg
9. A Kinder Gentler Strongman? Siegmund Breitbart in Eastern Europe \ Sharon Gillerman
10. Family Matters: German Jewish Masculinities among Nazi Era Refugees \ Judith Gerson
List of Contributors
Index
