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Middle Eastern and North African Jewish Masculinities

Bodies of Knowledge across Generations and Geographies

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open access | peer reviewed

Abstract
Middle Eastern and North African (hereafter MENA) Jewish Masculinities: Bodies of Knowledge across Generations and Geographies explores how masculinities among Jews in and from the MENA region have been constructed, negotiated, and transformed across time, space, and language. Moving from the early twentieth-century post-Ottoman and colonial histories through Israel’s statehood and new Jewish diasporas in the Americas, the volume specifically traces how migration, displacement, and cultural translation reshape the meanings of MENA Jewish masculinities, including Mizrahi ones in Israel. Through close readings of fiction, poetry, song, and personal narrative, the essays uncover shifting figures of the father, the male labourer, the soldier, the queer subject, and the writer. Drawing from gender studies, Jewish history, migration studies, and literary criticism, the contributors approach masculinity as an embodied and mobile category – formed through movement across geographies as well as shifting power relations. Spanning multiple generations of MENA Jewish masculinities, the volume shows how Orientalist hierarchies, Zionist remasculinization, and diasporic reimaginings continually refashion Jewish male identities. From colonial rankings of ‘Eastern’ bodies to poetic reclamations of tenderness and vulnerability, Middle Eastern and North African Jewish Masculinities positions masculinity as a travelling concept – translated across empires and languages, shaped by memory and motion, and embodied in the lived experiences of men who carry, contest, and rewrite the meanings of being MENA Jews.

Keywords Israeli Literature • Ethnicities • 1950s Israel • Gay identity • Jewish masculinities • Dror Mishani • Oriental • Yehoshua Kenaz • Father • Fathers • Daughter • Postcolonial Studies • Sabra myth • Masculinities • Performance of identity • Sephardic Studies • Trauma • Queer Mizrahim • Mizrahi • Yoram Kaniuk • Jewish-Israeli masculinity • Sephardi-Mizrahi Jews • Thessaloniki • Sabra • Sami Berdugo • Abdellatif Kechiche • Corporeality • Queer Studies • Decolonisation of Jewish Studies • Grandfathers • Third generation poets • Mobilities • Gender • Haifa • Moroccan immigrants • Troubadours’ scene • Mandate Palestine • Narrative poetics • Homosexuality in Israel • Mizrahi poetry • Mizrahi literature • Language • Body • Re-masculinization • Ballads • Zionism • Masculinity • Writing body • Mizrahi masculinity • Fatherhood • Bodies • Male marginalization • Mizrahi masculinities • Migration

Thema codes JBSF2 • JBSL • NHTB • 5PGJ • 1FB

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/979-12-5742-004-8 | e-ISBN 979-12-5742-004-8 | ISBN (PRINT) 979-12-5742-005-5 | Published Dec. 15, 2025 | Language en

Copyright © 2025 Piera Rossetto, Hadas Shabat Nadir, Aviad Moreno. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.