Bulletin: Zionism and Political History

Articles

• Menashe Anzi and Anja Siegemund, German Jews in the Middle East: New Perspectives
• Matan Boord, Labor Zionism Urban Men and the ‘New Jew’ in Mandate Palestine (in Hebrew)
• Tamir Goren, The Jewish Neighbourhoods of Jaffa and the Question of Annexation to Tel Aviv at the End of the British Mandate
• Daniel Kessler, The Jewish Community in Nineteenth Century Palestine: Evidence from the Montefiore Censuses

Events

Pnina Lahav, “Golda Meir: A Biographical Sketch,” Bildner Center, Rutgers, March 27, 2017

 

Thesis: Omary, Israeli Character Depictions in Hollywood Films

Omary, Hanan H. Israeli Character Depictions in Hollywood Films (1948-2008), BA thesis. The American University in Cairo, 2016.

 

URL: http://dar.aucegypt.edu/bitstream/handle/10526/4789/Thesis Draft-Israeli Characters in Hollywood Films-14-TOTAL.pdf (PDF)

 

Abstract

This research examines depictions of Israeli characters in Hollywood films over a span of 60 years starting with Israel’s early years of statehood until present day. The films selected for this research are Exodus (1960) for early statehood and Munich (2005) and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (2008) for present day depictions. People have always been fascinated by Hollywood films since the inception of filmmaking. Movie-going audiences have flocked to movie theaters to watch the latest productions and see their stars in action. Therefore, it is important to understand what these characters represent and the messages they communicate to the audience. This research applies discourse analysis as its methodology, and framing and film theory as its theoretical framework. The research shows that the three main Israeli characters in these three Hollywood films are depicted as being consistent with American society values and ideologies.

 

 

 

New Article: Ofengenden, Therapy and Satire in Contemporary Israeli Film and Literature

Ofengenden, Ari. “National Identity in Global Times: Therapy and Satire in Contemporary Israeli Film and Literature.” The Comparatist 39 (2015): 294-312.

 

URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1103877

 

Extract

To conclude let us step back and look at the effects of all of these transformation narratives together. These and other novels and films engage in a sustained reusing of the past and successfully transform the way people articulate their identity. They do this with an empathic retelling of the national story like Oz, with the German or Arab Israeli other as in the film Walk on Water and Arab Labor, or with a crazed narrator like Kaniuk’s and Castel-Bloom’s. Therapeutic interventions end with a working through of displacement and immigration, a heightened awareness of the effects of the Holocaust, and a new appreciation of the creative potential of Jewish identity and culture. Self-critical satire breaks open a monolithic national identity, exposing its constructed nature and calls for creative transformations. We can now ask why these two narratives are so central to the way literature and film re-imagine national identity in contemporary times. I think that the answer lies most prominently in globalization. International flows of culture, goods, and people help strengthen civil society in its critique and parody of state violence and state agents. Somewhat paradoxically, globalization also leads to a demand for specifically national narratives in the international market. In a recent talk, Salman Rushdie pointed out that contemporary writers are increasingly asked to mediate the story of a nation for an international audience. Indeed that is what his own Midnight’s Children did for India, what J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace did for South Africa, Toni Morrison’s novels for the U.S., and Oz and Grossman for Israel. Thus we get narratives that are called to represent the nation on an international market but heal, critique, or poke fun at it at the same time. The system in which Hebrew literature finds itself has radically changed. Previously this system or field was constructed as a national field; now the field is constituted as semi-global. Some actors achieve international success while others remain domestic. Some mediate and explain the national story on the global stage while others parody the nation in order to change it.

Israeli national-cultural discourse is not a sole expression of some underlying economic forces that determine its content. However, its expression is a result of creative adaptation to economical and political pressures and opportunities that have become more and more global. Mainstream literature and culture has responded by articulating narratives that simultaneously reflect feelings of lack of political agency and an empathic apologetic self-representation for the global other. Minor literature in Israel saw an opportunity in the weakening of the state to articulate a critique in the form of parody that attempts to reconfigure national identity.

 

 

 

New Article: Lichtenstein, Zionists, Sport, and Belonging in Interwar Czechoslovakia

Lichtenstein, Tatjana. “‘An Athlete Like a Soldier Must Not Retreat’: Zionists, Sport, and Belonging in Interwar Czechoslovakia.” Shofar 34.1 (2015): 1-26.

 

URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shofar/v034/34.1.lichtenstein.html

 

Abstract

This article examines Zionists’ politics of belonging in interwar Czechoslovakia. It shows that the Jewish sports and gymnastics organization Maccabi was a vehicle for Zionists’ efforts to construct Jews’ belonging as individuals and as a collective in the new, multinational state. While Jews’ civic equality was formally guaranteed by the Czechoslovak constitution, actual, social and civic equality depended on a broader, public identification of Jews as legitimately belonging in Czechoslovakia. For Zionists, making Jews insiders, individuals that were respected as equal and loyal citizens, was contingent on Jews’ simultaneous belonging to a Jewish national and a Czechoslovak civic collective. Drawing on the ideal of the Zionist “new Jew” and on local traditions for minority nationalism, activists sought to create a symbiosis between Zionism and Czechoslovak patriotism in the 1920s and 30s.

 

 

New Article: Szobel, Prostitution, Power and Vulnerability in Early Twentieth-Century Hebrew Literature

Szobel, Ilana. “‘Lights in the Darkness’: Prostitution, Power and Vulnerability in Early Twentieth-Century Hebrew Literature.” Prooftexts 34.2 (2015): 170-206.

 

URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/prooftexts/v034/34.2.szobel.html

 

Abstract

This article explores the juxtaposition of prostitution, masculinity, and nationalism in the works of Hebrew writers at the beginning of the twentieth century. By discussing the psycho-poetical elements that underlie David Vogel’s depiction of prostitution and the ideological elements in Gershon Shofman’s work, and by exposing their dialogue with Hayim Nahman Bialik, this project explores power, vulnerability, gender, sexuality, and nationalism in Hebrew literature of the first half of the twentieth century.

My study argues that the trope of the prostitute enables writers of early Hebrew literature to negotiate questions of strength and weakness in the Jewish world. Although Bialik’s option of sovereign masculinity became the norm for the Zionist discourse, Shofman, Vogel, Brenner, Reuveni and others expressed different perceptions of gender and power. Hence, in order to understand the intensity of the poetic, national, and gendered dilemmas and struggles of this generation, this study offers to listen not only to their concepts of revival, renewal and empowerment, but also to their expressions of weakness, frustration, loss, anger and aggression.

 

 

ToC: Israel Affairs 21.4 (2015)

This new issue contains the following articles:

Articles
The journalist as a messiah: journalism, mass-circulation, and Theodor Herzl’s Zionist vision
Asaf Shamis
Pages: 483-499
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076188

The debate between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine (1920–48) over the re-interment of Zionist leaders
Doron Bar
Pages: 500-515
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076180

Development of information technology industries in Israel and Ireland, 2000–2010
Erez Cohen
Pages: 516-540
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076183

Israel’s nuclear amimut policy and its consequences
Ofer Israeli
Pages: 541-558
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076185

She got game?! Women, sport and society from an Israeli perspective
Yair Galily, Haim Kaufman & Ilan Tamir
Pages: 559-584
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076184

The origin of globalized anti-Zionism: A conjuncture of hatreds since the Cold War
Ernest Sternberg
Pages: 585-601
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.984419

The Diaspora and the homeland: political goals in the construction of Israeli narratives to the Diaspora
Shahar Burla
Pages: 602-619
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076181

India–Israel relations: the evolving partnership
Ashok Sharma & Dov Bing
Pages: 620-632
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076189

The design of the ‘new Hebrew’ between image and reality: a portrait of the student in Eretz Yisrael at the beginning of ‘Hebrew education’ (1882–1948)
Nirit Raichel
Pages: 633-647
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076187

The evolution of Arab psychological warfare: towards ‘nonviolence’ as a political strategy
Irwin J. Mansdorf
Pages: 648-667
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076186

Militancy and religiosity in the service of national aspiration: Fatah’s formative years
Ido Zelkovitz
Pages: 668-690
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1076191

Book Reviews
The historical David: the real life of an invented hero/David, king of Israel, and Caleb in biblical memory
David Rodman
Pages: 691-693
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083700

Britain’s moment in Palestine: retrospect and perspectives, 1917–48/Palestine in the Second World War: strategic plans and political dilemmas
David Rodman
Pages: 693-696
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083701

Israeli culture on the road to the Yom Kippur War
David Rodman
Pages: 696-698
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083702

The one-state condition
Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Pages: 698-701
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083699

Globalising hatred: the new Antisemitism
Rusi Jaspal
Pages: 701-704
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083703

Psychological Warfare in the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Rusi Jaspal
Pages: 704-707
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1083704

Editorial Board
Editorial Board

Pages: ebi-ebi
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2015.1109819

New Article: Hirsch, Hygiene among Early Zionist halutzim

Hirsch, Dafna. “Hygiene, Dirt and the Shaping of a New Man among the Early Zionist halutzim.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 18.3 (2015): 300-18.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367549414526729

 

Abstract

Personal hygiene has pride of place in two of the most important scholarly conceptualizations of the modern body: that of Norbert Elias and that of Michel Foucault. This article analyzes hygienic practices among early Zionist ideological workers – halutzim (lit. ‘pioneers’). Contrary to the image of the healthy and vigorous manual worker, physicians lamented the disregard for hygiene among the halutzim – a behavior which they attributed to the latter’s ignorance and indifference to matters of health. The halutzim, on their part, construed their hygienic misbehavior as signifying proletarization. However, a close examination of the practices of halutzim, and the meanings they attached to them, reveals a complex and contextual repertoire. As I argue through the case study of the halutzim, rather than a mere instance of discipline (Foucualt) or self-control (Elias), hygiene was a cultural repertoire which was open for appropriation and re-signification in various ways and for various purposes.

 

New Article: Hollander, Zionism, Masculinity, and Sexuality in Reuveni’s ‘Ad Yerushalayim

Hollander, Philip. “Rereading ‘Decadent’ Palestinian Hebrew Literature: The Intersection of Zionism, Masculinity, and Sexuality in Aharon Reuveni’s ‘Ad Yerushalayim.” AJS Review 39.1 (2015): 3-26.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0364009414000622

 

Abstract

This article asserts that politics motivated Aharon Reuveni to employ representations of psychic fragmentation and dysfunctional social institutions to portray Palestinian Jewish life in his novelistic trilogy ‘Ad Yerushalayim. These purportedly decadent representations helped him foreground individual and collective flaws he saw limiting the early twentieth-century Palestinian Jewish community’s development and promote norms he saw as conducive to growth. Thus, as examination of the trilogy’s central male figures demonstrates, Reuveni advances a Zionist masculinity grounded in introspectiveness and ongoing commitment to the achievement of communally shared goals. To further support this Zionist masculine form, the trilogy categorizes men who pursue homosocial ties with others who don’t maintain this masculinity as homosexuals. Thus gender and sexuality are used to coerce male readers into adopting specific behavioral norms. This attention to gender and sexuality’s role in early twentieth-century Palestinian Hebrew fiction offers a way to grasp its long-overlooked political character.

 

ToC: Israel Studies 20.2 (2015); Special Section: Bodies In Question

Israel Studies 20.2 (2015) Table of Contents:

 

Special Section: Bodies In Question

Wars of the Wombs: Struggles Over Abortion Policies in Israel (pp. 1-26)

Rebecca Steinfeld

Halutzah or Beauty Queen? National Images of Women in Early Israeli Society (pp. 27-52)

Julie Grimmeisen

‘Re-orient-ation’: Sport and the Transformation of the Jewish Body and Identity (pp. 53-75)

Yotam Hotam

‘Uniting the Nation’s Various Limbs into a National Body’ the Jerusalem People’s House (pp. 76-109)

Esther Grabiner

 

Articles

The Test of Maritime Sovereignty: The Establishment of the Zim National Shipping Company and the Purchase of the Kedmah, 1945–1952 (pp. 110-134)

Kobi Cohen-Hattab

Budgeting for Ultra-Orthodox Education—The Failure of Ultra-Orthodox Politics, 1996–2006 (pp. 135-162)

Hadar Lipshits

The Mizrahi Sociolect in Israel: Origins and Development (pp. 163-182)

Yehudit Henshke

Review Essay: The Theoretical Normalization of Israel in International Relations(pp. 183-189)

[Reviews  of: The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Ministers: When Hard-Liners Opt for Peace, by Yael S. Aronoff; Why Hawks Become Doves: Shimon Peres and Foreign Policy Change in Israel by Guy Ziv]

Brent E. Sasley

 

Notes on Contributors (pp. 190-191)

Guidelines for Contributors (pp. 192-194)

Reviews: Spiegel, Embodying Hebrew Culture

Spiegel, Nina S. Embodying Hebrew Culture. Aesthetics, Athletics, and Dance in the Jewish Community of Mandate Palestine. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013.

 

 

Reviews:

• Heidecker, Liora Bing. “Review.” Nashim 26 (2014): 163-165.
• Elron, Sari. “Review.” Middle East Journal 68.1 (2014): 165-166.
• Zer-Zion, Shelly. “Review.” Journal of Israeli History 33.2 (2014): 241-244.
• Manor, Dalia. “Review.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 15.1 (2016): 159-61.

New Article: Lidovsky Cohen, Poetics and Politics in Alona Kimhi’s Lily La Tigresse

Lidovsky Cohen, Zafrira. “The Non-Chosen Body: Poetics and Politics in Alona Kimhi’s Lily La Tigresse.” Hebrew Studies 55 (2014): 355-77.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hebrew_studies/v055/55.cohen.html

 

Abstract

Beginning with the female grotesque body in its midst, this study examines the bodies of key fictional characters from the center and margins of contemporary Israeli society that Alona Kimhi constructs in her novel Lily La Tigresse and considers their political implications. It asserts that the image of a well-built and almighty Jewish male body that the Zionist revolutionaries of the early twentieth century dreamt of remains, in Kimhi’s view, a beau ideal in present-day Israel. However, the idealization of a healthy Jewish male body has given rise not to a healthy Jewish nation that the Zionist forefathers desired, but to a self-appointed sociocultural elite that seeks to sustain its position on the top by violently excluding all others who are pushed to the margins and left to invent their own identities.

 

 

 

New Article: Bunyan, The Jewish Brigade and the Establishment of the Jewish State

Bunyan, James. “To What Extent Did the Jewish Brigade Contribute to the Establishment of the Jewish State?” Middle Eastern Studies 51.1 (2015): 28-48.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00263206.2014.934227

 

Abstract

Whilst the desperation of key international Zionist leaders, such as Chaim Weizmann, to field a fighting force against the Nazis consisting entirely of Palestinian Jews is evident in their correspondence, it is difficult to ascertain just how significant the practical contribution of the Jewish Brigade was to the Zionist project. The political effect of activities such as facilitating illegal immigration and, post-war, quietly training Jewish underground forces in Palestine cannot by their very nature be evaluated. Yet perhaps the Brigade’s most important contribution to the embryonic state of Israel was the huge leap in political and cultural strength that boasting such a force represented.

New Book: Fuchs, Israeli Feminist Scholarship

Fuchs, Esther, ed. Israeli Feminist Scholarship. Gender, Zionism, and Difference. Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 2014.

More than a dozen scholars give voice to cutting-edge postcolonial trends (from ecofeminism to gender identity in family life) that question traditional approaches to Zionism while highlighting nationalism as the core issue of Israeli feminist scholarship today.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction. Israeli Feminist Scholarship: Gender, Zionism, and Difference

Esther Fuchs

Chapter One. The Evolution of Critical Paradigms in Israeli Feminist Scholarship: A Theoretical Model

Esther Fuchs

Chapter Two. Politicizing Masculinities: Shahada and Haganah

Sheila H. Katz

Chapter Three. The Double or Multiple Image of the New Hebrew Woman

Margalit Shilo

Chapter Four. The Heroism of Hannah Senesz: An Exercise in Creating Collective National Memory in the State of Israel

Judith T. Baumel

Chapter Five. The Feminisation of Stigma in the Relationship Between Israelis and Shoah Survivors

Ronit Lentin

Chapter Six. Gendering Military Service in the Israel Defense Forces

Dafna N. Izraeli

Chapter Seven. The Halachic Trap: Marriage and Family Life

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari

Chapter Eight. Motherhood as a National Mission: The Construction of Womanhood in the Legal Discourse in Israel

Nitza Berkovitch

Chapter Nine. No Home at Home: Women’s Fiction vs. Zionist Practice

Yaffah Berlovitz

Chapter Ten. Wasteland Revisited: An Ecofeminist Strategy

Hannah Naveh

Chapter Eleven. Tensions in Israeli Feminism: The Mizrahi-Ashkenazi Rift

Henriette Dahan-Kalev

Chapter Twelve. Scholarship, Identity, and Power: Mizrahi Women in Israel

Pnina Motzafi-Haller

Chapter Thirteen. Reexamining Femicide: Breaking the Silence and Crossing “Scientific” Borders

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

Chapter Fourteen. The Construction of Lesbianism as Nonissue in Israel

Erella Shadmi

Chapter Fifteen. From Gender to Genders: Feminists Read Women’s Locations in Israeli Society

Hanna Herzog

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Index

 

Purchase from publisher: https://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/fucisr

New Article: Oppenheimer, On the Becoming of the Mizrahi Male Body

Oppenheimer, Yochai. “On the Becoming of the Mizrahi Male Body.” Orbis Litterarum 69.1 (2014): 23-56.

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/oli.12018/abstract

 

Abstract

The representation of the Mizrahi male body in Israeli culture differentiates between the Western Ashkenazi body, which served as the standard of fitness and hygiene and of social functionality, and the Oriental Mizrahi body which, in hegemonic perspective, represented the defective, dangerous opposite of these qualities.

 In this context, I find it appropriate to use the concepts defined by Deleuze and Guattari about the body and its variety of emerging forms, which they understand not only as multifaceted forms of resistance to institutional imprint on the body but also as ways of creating flexible and multifaceted alternative possibilities of bodily experience. These concepts may well signify a place where Mizrahim themselves conduct a subversive literary discourse about Mizrahi corporeality, while deconstructing the hegemonic narrative framework related to the Mizrahi body. Dan-Benaya Seri (Misha’el) blurs the boundaries between men and women – as well as between humans and animals. Albert Suissa (Akud) elaborates on a new language of gestures and body positions that repudiates any meaningful interpretation. Mizrahi writing refused to reproduce the national Zionist Israeli body and was instead attentive to the living body and its multiple possibilities of becoming.

ToC: Israel Affairs 19,3 (2013)

Israel     Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 3, 01 Jul 2013 is now available on Taylor & Francis Online. This new issue contains the following articles: Original Articles ‘We     need the messiah so that he may not come’: on David Ben-Gurion’s use of     messianic language Nir Kedar Pages: 393-409 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799864 Beyond     a one-man show: the prelude of Revisionist Zionism, 1922–25 Jan Zouplna Pages: 410-432 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799871 Another     Orient in early Zionist thought: East Asia in the press of the Ben-Yehuda     family Guy Podoler Pages: 433-450 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799866 Jerusalem     in Anglo-American policy in the immediate wake of the June 1967 war Arieh J. Kochavi Pages: 451-467 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799865 A     farewell to arms? NGO campaigns for embargoes on military exports: the case     of the UK and Israel Gerald M. Steinberg, Anne Herzberg & Asher Fredman Pages: 468-487 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799869 The     politics of ‘over-victimization’ – Palestinian proprietary claims in the     service of political goals Haim Sandberg Pages: 488-504 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799868 Equality,     orthodoxy and politics: the conflict over national service in Israel Etta Bick Pages: 505-525 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799862 The     establishment of a political-educational network in the State of Israel:     Maayan Hahinuch Hatorani Anat Feldman Pages: 526-541 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799863 Between     the dream and the reality: vocational education in Israel, 1948–92 Nirit Raichel Pages: 542-561 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799867 The     influence of mergers on the capital market Tchai Tavor Pages: 562-579 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799870 Book Reviews 1973:     the way to war Raphael Cohen-Almagor Pages: 580-582 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.778094 Land     and desire in early Zionism David Rodman Pages: 583-584 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799881 Israel     in Africa, 1956–1976 David Rodman Pages: 584-585 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799899 Zion’s     dilemmas: how Israel makes national security policy David Rodman Pages: 586-587 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799882 Should     Israel exist? A sovereign nation under attack by the international     community David Rodman Pages: 588-589 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799885 The     role of US diplomacy in the lead-up to the Six Day War: balancing moral     commitments and national interests David Rodman Pages: 589-590 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799886 The     wars of the Maccabees: the Jewish struggle for freedom, 167–37 BC David Rodman Pages: 590-592 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799887 In     the aftermath of Operation Pillar of Defence: the Gaza strip, November 2012 David Rodman Pages: 592-593 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799888 The     future of the Jews: how global forces are impacting the Jewish people,     Israel and its relationship with the United States David Rodman Pages: 593-595 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799889 The     lives of ordinary people in ancient Israel: where archaeology and the Bible     intersect David Rodman Pages: 595-597 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799890 Israel     vs. Iran: the shadow war David Rodman Pages: 597-599 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799883 The     triumph of Israel’s radical right Evan Renfro Pages: 599-601 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2013.799884

Cite: Burstein, Performing Holocaust Memory: Judd Ne’eman’s Zitra

Burstein, Janet Handler. "Performing Holocaust Memory: Judd Ne’eman’s Zitra." AJS Review 36.2 (2012): 323-36.

 

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URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8749266

–

Abstract

Memory and its representations can reveal as much about a culture’s sense of itself as they do about its past. Israeli critics have traced the ways in which representations of the Holocaust in their country’s films reflect, among many other issues, Israeli culture’s preoccupation with the construction of Israeli identity. According to one critic, the Holocaust survivor in films of the 1940s and 1950s embodied weakness and passivity: “all the traits that Israeli identity [was] meant to contrast.” In the 1970s, another critic suggests, films “read” the Holocaust from a “nationalist perspective…highlighting heroic resistance….” Thus, within a few decades, Israeli cinema seems to have represented in radically different ways—through the lens of the Holocaust—the intricacies of Israeli identity formation: first, by shaping memory in terms of the putative weaknesses of diaspora Jews, contrasting them with the strengths of the “new” Israeli Jew; and later, by emphasizing characteristics that linked heroic resisters with heroic Israelis.

Cite: Schaffer, The Jewish Soldier in British War Service, 1899–1945

Schaffer, Gavin. “Unmasking the ‘Muscle Jew’: the Jewish Soldier in British War Service, 1899–1945.” Patterns of Prejudice 46.3-4 (2012): 375-396.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0031322X.2012.701809

 

Abstract

Constructions of Jews in twentieth-century Europe have been riddled throughout with inconsistencies and contradictions. However, some themes have been surprisingly persistent, none more so than constructions of Jews as weak, effeminate and cowardly. Schaffer looks at one significant set of responses to such characterizations, specifically at the rise of the ‘muscle Jew’ in Jewish and non-Jewish thinking. After the term was coined by Max Nordau at the turn of the twentieth century, the idea of the ‘muscle Jew’ came to represent a dominant current of Jewish identity reformulation. More recently, a series of scholars have come to understand the idea as a manifestation of Zionist ideology, a statement of a nationalist desire for Jewish reinvention in the face of endemic European antisemitism. By using the example of British Jewish service in the Boer War, the First World War and the Second World War, Schaffer argues rather that the idea of the ‘muscle Jew’ can be better understood as a reflection of Jewish desire for European integration, an attempt to present Jewish soldiers as equal to their non-Jewish equivalents. Moreover, he contends that the ‘muscle Jew’ needs to be understood as an idea rooted in the longue durée of Jewish history, one that represents only one strand of Jewish self-imagining.

Cite: Ashkenazi, German Jewish Athletes and the Formation of Zionist (Trans-)National Culture

Ashkenazi, Ofer. “German Jewish Athletes and the Formation of Zionist (Trans-)National Culture.” Jewish Social Studies 17.3 (2011): 124-55.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jewish_social_studies/v017/17.3.ashkenazi.html

 

Abstract

Despite the popularity of Zionist sports clubs and the incorporation of athletic activity as an essential component within the Zionist ethos, Jewish sports in pre-1948 Palestine have been allotted a relatively minor place in Zionist historiography. One reason for this marginalization is the convoluted institutionalization of Zionist sports and the tensions it embedded between various perceptions of identity (national, transnational, regional, and political). Such tensions exerted a crucial influence on the ways Zionism was experienced and interpreted by the numerous people who practiced, taught, trained, and watched sports before and after their immigration to Palestine. This article underscores the roles of sports in the Central European Zionist activism and imagination in order to present a twofold argument. First, sports provided a distinctive realm that enabled Jewish immigrants from Central Europe to assimilate into the Zionist national culture in Palestine and to influence significantly the shape of this culture. Second, for many of the German-speaking newcomers to Palestine in the 1930s, sports also provided a unique discursive sphere in which several perceptions of identity could coexist under the umbrella of Jewish nationalism.