Digital Commons Network^™

From Talking Softly To Carrying A Big Shtick: Jewish Masculinity In Twentieth-Century America, Miriam Eve Mora

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation follows the progress of American Jewish men in the difficult and often backsliding process of acculturation into American life. Jewish men have historically been held to a different standard of masculinity, one which both Jews and non-Jews throughout American history have ascribed in both positive and negative ways, often depicting Jewish men as bookish, gentle, weak, and even effeminate. Those Jews who strove to attain American manhood engaged in masculine American endeavors to the extent of their access and ingenuity. Their struggle to enter institutions of American masculinity reveals a great deal about Jewish acceptance in the United …