Jewish Masculinities

Studies exploring the history of the German-Jewish male identity from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries, across a myriad of societal occupations.

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 sixteenth through the late twentieth 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.

“A valuable addition to the growing field of Jewish gender history.” —Derek Penslar, University of Toronto

“[This book] assembles innovative, vivid, and inspiring inquiries into the intersection of Jewish history, German history, and gender history. By focusing on the male side of Jewish gender history . . . [this] book establishes a new field, profiting from a broad range of never (or rarely) before used primary sources, such as memoirs, letters, interviews, and obscure tabloids.” —German Studies Review, May 2014

“[A]n excellent introduction to the Zionist remasculinization of the Jewish male.” —H-Judaic, February 2015

“[I]nsightful, innovative and largely entertaining. . . . [T]his volume makes a very valuable and original contribution to German-Jewish history.” —German History

“Historians of central Europe will be enriched by the interrogations of “theory” along with excavations of little-known yet critical avenues of Jewish history in this excellent volume.” —Central European History