Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration (Routledge Jewish Studies Series)

304 Pages·2007·4.119 MB·English

by  Todd Presner

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MUSCULAR JUDAISM
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13111 For centuries, the stereotype of Jews as physically weak and racially inferior
4 persisted across Europe. Zionist thinkers sought to turn this stereotype on
5 its head at the end of the nineteenth century by creating a popular counter
6 image: the muscular Jew. By emulating their ancestral war heroes (such as
7 Bar Kochba and the Maccabees) and participating in all aspects of the
8 contemporaneous European body reform movement, Jews could cultivate
9 discipline, agility, and strength—the very ideals that would help turn them
20111 into a healthy, physically fit, nationally minded, and militarily strong people.
1 In this interdisciplinary history of the Jewish body, Presner probes the
2 complex cultural and intellectual origins of the “muscle Jew.” He argues that
3 the Jewish body was radically reconfigured at the end of the nineteenth and
4 early part of the twentieth century in light of modern European discourses
5111 of regeneration. Traversing sports history, medical literature, popular culture,
6 aesthetics, gender studies, colonialism, and military history, Presner weaves
7 together the story of the regeneration of the Jewish body.
8 Richly illustrated with rare archival material, Muscular Judaism will
9 appeal to scholars and students of Jewish Studies as well as anyone interested
30111 in modern European history, gender studies, and histories of the body.
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2 Todd Samuel Presner is Associate Professor of Germanic Languages
3 and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. His
4 research focuses on modern German and German-Jewish intellectual and
5 cultural history. He is also the author of Mobile Modernity: Germans, Jews,
6 Trains.
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ROUTLEDGE JEWISH STUDIES SERIES
Edited by Oliver Leaman
University of Kentucky
Studies, which are interpreted to cover the disciplines of history, sociology,
anthropology, culture, politics, philosophy, theology, religion, as they relate
to Jewish affairs. The remit includes texts which have as their primary focus
issues, ideas, personalities and events of relevance to Jews, Jewish life and
the concepts which have characterised Jewish culture both in the past and
today. The series is interested in receiving appropriate scripts or proposals.
MEDIEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY OF THE TALMUD
PHILOSOPHY Hyam Maccoby
An introduction
Dan Cohn-Sherbok FROM SYNAGOGUE TO
CHURCH: THE TRADITIONAL
FACING THE OTHER DESIGN
The ethics of Emmanuel Levinas Its beginning, its definition, its end
Edited by Seán Hand John Wilkinson
MOSES MAIMONIDES HIDDEN PHILOSOPHY OF
Oliver Leaman HANNAH ARENDT
Margaret Betz Hull
A USER’S GUIDE TO FRANZ
ROSENZWEIG’S STAR OF DECONSTRUCTING THE BIBLE
REDEMPTION Abraham ibn Ezra’s introduction
Norbert M. Samuelson to the Torah
Irene Lancaster
ON LIBERTY
Jewish philosophical IMAGE OF THE BLACK IN
perspectives JEWISH CULTURE
Edited by Daniel H. Frank A history of the Other
Abraham Melamed
REFERRING TO GOD
Jewish and Christian philosophical FROM FALASHAS TO
and theological perspectives ETHIOPIAN JEWS
Edited by Paul Helm Daniel Summerfield
JUDAISM, PHILOSOPHY, PHILOSOPHY IN A TIME OF
CULTURE CRISIS
Selected studies by E. I. J. Don Isaac Abravanel: defender
Rosenthal of the faith
Erwin Rosenthal Seymour Feldman
1111 JEWS, MUSLIMS AND MASS ANTISEMITISM AND
2 MEDIA MODERNITY
3 Mediating the ‘Other’ Innovation and continuity
4 Edited by Tudor Parfitt with Hyam Maccoby
5 Yulia Egorova
6 JEWS AND INDIA
7 JEWS OF ETHIOPIA History, image, perceptions
8 The birth of an elite Yulia Egorova
9 Edited by Emanuela Trevisan Semi
1011 and Tudor Parfitt JEWISH MYSTICISM AND
1 MAGIC
2 ART IN ZION An anthropological perspective
13111 The genesis of national art in Maureen Bloom
4 Jewish Palestine
5 Dalia Manor MAIMONIDES’GUIDE TO
6 THE PERPLEXED
7 HEBREW LANGUAGE AND Silence and salvation
8 JEWISH THOUGHT Donald McCallum
9 David Patterson
20111 MUSCULAR JUDAISM
1 CONTEMPORARY JEWISH The Jewish body and the politics
2 PHILOSOPHY of regeneration
3 An introduction Todd Samuel Presner
4 Irene Kajon
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The Jewish body and the politics
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6 Todd Samuel Presner
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First published 2007
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library,2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2007 Todd Samuel Presner
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Presner, Todd Samuel.
Muscular Judaism: the Jewish body and the politics of regeneration/
Todd Samuel Presner.
p. cm.—(Routledge Jewish studies series; no. 24)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Jews—Identity. 2. Jews—Attitudes. 3. Group identity.
4. Zionism—Philosophy. 5. Stereotypes (Social psychology)
6. Attitude (Psychology) 7. Body image—Social aspects. I. Title.
DS143.P717 2007
305.892′4—dc22 2006035120
ISBN 0-203-96186-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–77178–1 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–96186–2 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–77178–8 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–96186–5 (ebk)
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511 FOR JAIME AND BRAD
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CONTENTS
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4 Acknowledgments xiii
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6 Introduction: visions of muscle Jews xv
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1 The origins of muscular Judaism 1
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2 The rhetoric of regeneration: “clear heads, solid stomachs,
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and hard muscles” 24
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3 The aesthetics of regeneration: Martin Buber, E. M. Lilien,
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and the aesthetic state 65
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4 The gymnastics of regeneration: the anatomo-politics of
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the Jewish body 106
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5 The land of regeneration: seafaring Jews and the Zionist
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colonial imaginary 155
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6 Soldiers of regeneration: the military might of old-new
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Maccabees and the Great War 187
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Concluding remarks 217
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Notes 219
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Index 267
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ix