Jewish Masculinities

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.

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.