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

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.