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Social Science Men's Studies

Jewish Masculinities

German Jews, Gender, and History

edited by Benjamin Maria Baader, Sharon Gillerman & Paul Lerner

contributions by Judith Gerson, Etan Bloom, Stefanie Schueler-Springorum, Andreas Gotzmann, Robin Judd, Ann Goldberg & Lisa Zwicker

Publisher
Indiana University Press
Initial publish date
Jul 2012
Category
Men's Studies, Jewish Studies
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780253002068
    Publish Date
    Jul 2012
    List Price
    $37.00
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780253002136
    Publish Date
    Jul 2012
    List Price
    $105.00

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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.

About the authors

Contributor Notes

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 the University of Southern California. He is author of Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry, and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890-1930.

Editorial Reviews

[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.May 2014

German Studies Review

[A]n excellent introduction to the Zionist remasculinization of the Jewish male.Feb. 2015

H-Judaic

[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