Full Description
Historically Judaism has been called both a nation and a religion, yet there are those Jews who eschew the religious and national definitions for a cultural one. For example, while TV's Mrs. Maisel is ostensibly a Jew, the actor playing her is not, and Mrs. Maisel's actions are not always Jewish. In The Fractured Jew Joel West separates Judaism into phenomenological and performative, starting with popular portrayals of Jews and Judaism, in today's media, as a jumping-off point to understand Judaism and Jewishness, not from the outside, but from the emic, internal, Jewish point of view.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
What This Book Is Not
Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
1 Who or What Is a Jew?
2 A Fractured Framework: Trauma, Identity, Ethnicity
3 Diachronic Denominationally Jewish
4 North American Semiotics: Jew, Jewish or Judaism as a Sign
5 North American Jews: Alienations
6 North American Jews: Denominations as History
7 Preforming Jew, Jewish, Judaism
8 The Jew Is a Joke—Internalized Antisemitism
Conclusion
References
Index
