Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism

An examination of how early twentieth-century American Jewish men experienced manhood and presented their masculinity to others.

How did American Jewish men experience manhood, and how did they present their masculinity to others? In this distinctive book, Sarah Imhoff shows that the project of shaping American Jewish manhood was not just one of assimilation or exclusion. Jewish manhood was neither a mirror of normative American manhood nor its negative, effeminate opposite. Imhoff demonstrates how early twentieth-century Jews constructed a gentler, less aggressive manhood, drawn partly from the American pioneer spirit and immigration experience, but also from Hollywood and the YMCA, which required intense cultivation of a muscled male physique. She contends that these models helped Jews articulate the value of an acculturated American Judaism. Tapping into a rich historical literature to reveal how Jews looked at masculinity differently than Protestants or other religious groups, Imhoff illuminates the particular experience of American Jewish men.

“There is so much literature—and very good scholarship—on Judaism and gender, but the majority of that literature reflects an interest in women. A hearty thank you to Sarah Imhoff for writing the other half of the story and for doing it so elegantly.” —Claire Elise Katz, author of Levinas and the Crisis of Humanism

“Invariably lucid and engaging, Sarah Imhoff provides a secure foundation for how religion shaped American masculinity and how masculinity shaped American Judaism in the early twentieth century.” —Judith Gerson, author of By Thanksgiving We Were Americans: German Jewish Refugees and Holocaust Memory