Language:
English
Year of publication:
2022
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Jewish Identities
Angaben zur Quelle:
15,2 (2022) 135-151
Keywords:
Kahane, Meir
;
Jewish Defense League
;
Jewish men
;
Masculinity Social aspects
Abstract:
Meir Kahane, in his crusade for the protection of American Jews, based his Jewish Defense League on contemporary (non-Jewish) conceptions of American masculinity. Though it claimed an appeal for all Jewish people, its rhetoric was pointedly male, and the organization intended that its actions be carried out by Jewish men and boys, while reconstructing the Jewish male image in America. This paper examines the ways in which the Jewish Defense League attempted to brand itself as creating a new iteration of Jewish men and explores how this adopted masculine rhetoric was a part of an ongoing process of acculturation of Jewish men into the American masculine ideal. In a landscape of changing and reclaiming American racial and ethnic identities, the JDL fiercely supported Israel, yet remained determined to present itself as a distinctly American organization, capable of curing American Jewish men of their presumably emasculated Jewish condition.
DOI:
10.1353/jji.2022.0016
URL:
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