Unheroic conduct : the rise of heterosexuality and the invention of the Jewish man / Daniel Boyarin.

ISBN:

9780520919761

9780585057170

Title:

Unheroic conduct : the rise of heterosexuality and the invention of the Jewish man / Daniel Boyarin.

Author:

Boyarin, Daniel.

Personal Author:

Boyarin, Daniel.

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiv, 393 pages) : illustrations.

Series:

Contraversions ; 8

Contraversions ; 8.

Contents:

Prologue: Justify My Love -- pt. 1. Men Who Roam with the Sheep: Diaspora and the Image of the Jewish Man. 1. Goyim Naches; Or, the Mentsh and the Jewish Critique of Romance. 2. Jewish Masochism: On Penises and Politics, Power and Pain. 3. Rabbis and Their Pals: Rabbinic Homosociality and the Lives of Women. 4. Femminization and Its Discontents: Torah Study as a System for the Domination of Women -- pt. 2. The Rise of Heterosexuality and The Invention of the Modern Jew. 5. Freud's Baby, Fliess's Maybe; Or, Male Hysteria, Homophobia, and the Invention of the Jewish Man. 6. "You May Not Tell the Boys": The Diaspora Politics of a Bitextual Jew. 7. The Colonial Drag: Zionism, Gender, and Mimicry. 8. Retelling the Story of O.; Or, Bertha Pappenheim, My Hero.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Sex -- Religious aspects -- Judaism.

Theological anthropology -- Judaism.

Heterosexuality.

Judaism and psychoanalysis.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

1997

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
296.3878343 20	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

In a book that will both enlighten and provoke, Daniel Boyarin offers an alternative to the prevailing Euroamerican warrior/patriarch model of masculinity and recovers the Jewish ideal of the gentle, receptive male. The Western notion of the aggressive, sexually dominant male and the passive female reaches back through Freud to Roman times, but as Boyarin makes clear, such gender roles are not universal. Analyzing ancient and modern texts, he reveals early rabbis--studious, family-oriented--as exemplars of manhood and the prime objects of female desire in traditional Jewish society.

Challenging those who view the "feminized Jew" as a pathological product of the Diaspora or a figment of anti-Semitic imagination, Boyarin argues that the Diaspora produced valuable alternatives to the dominant cultures' overriding gender norms. He finds the origins of the rabbinic model of masculinity in the Talmud, and though unrelentingly critical of rabbinic society's oppressive aspects, he shows how it could provide greater happiness for women than the passive gentility required by bourgeois European standards.

Boyarin also analyzes the self-transformation of three iconic Viennese modern Jews: Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis; Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism; and Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O.), the first psychoanalytic patient and founder of Jewish feminism in Germany. Pappenheim is Boyarin's hero: it is she who provides him with a model for a militant feminist, anti-homophobic transformation of Orthodox Jewish society today.

Like his groundbreaking Carnal Israel , this book is talmudic scholarship in a whole new light, with a vitality that will command attention from readers in feminist studies, history of sexuality, Jewish culture, and the history of psychoanalysis.

Reviews (2)

Choice Review

Boyarin's book is a scholarly, well-written, and highly detailed exegesis of Talmudic texts. Boyarin argues that one theme running through much of ancient and modern Jewish writing is the picture of the gentle, studious male reading the Torah. Such a male is depicted as very desirable to Jewish women, who do much of the work outside the home. This theme, contends Boyarin, shows that the Euramerican ideal of the tough, dominant male provider and passive female housewife is not universal. However, that Talmudic theme contains its own misogyny, which Boyarin denounces. He discusses the lives and works of Sigmund Freud and Theodor Herzl, claiming to throw light on psychoanalysis and Zionism as co-constructors of the modern Jewish man. Boyarin also comments on Freud's patient "Anna O" (whose real name was Bertha Pappenheim), whom he admires greatly as an early militant leader of feminism and antihomophobia. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. W. Smith; California State University, Northridge

Library Journal Review

Boyarin (Talmudic culture, Berkeley) argues that modern Jewish culture has assimilated the macho male ethos of Western civilization. The result is the creation of the "muscle Jew," which divorces Jewish men from their emphasis on study, prayer, and gentleness. Ironically, in an effort to counter the anti-Semetic image of the so-called "Jewish wimp," Jewish men have abetted a process of internal colonization of Jewish culture by mainstream Christian culture and have adopted the anti-Semites' aggressive heterosexuality. Boyarin advocates a re-creation of the early Jewish male culture, based on the Talmud, which did not see inherent virtue in sports or aggressive behavior, and which he believes also lacked homophobia. In the process, he hopes traditional Jewish culture can also re-create itself without resorting to misogyny. A provocative work that will inspire controversy; strongly recommended for Judaica collections.Frederic Krome, Northern Kentucky Univ., Highland Heights (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.