Carrying a Big Schtick: Jewish Acculturation and Masculinity in the Twentieth Century

The Center for Jewish History and the American Jewish Historical Society welcomed Dr. Miriam Eve Mora for a discussion of her new book Carrying a Big Schtick: Jewish Acculturation and Masculinity in the Twentieth Century. She was joined in conversation by Dr. Ronnie Grinberg (University of Oklahoma), author of Write Like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals.
For 20th-century Jewish immigrants and their children attempting to gain full access to American society, performative masculinity was a tool of acculturation. However, this performance is consistently challenged by American mainstream society that holds Jewish men outside of the American ideal of masculinity. Depicted as weak, effeminate, cowardly, gentle, bookish, or conflict-averse, Jewish men have been ascribed these qualities by outside forces, but some have also intentionally subscribed themselves to masculinities at odds with the American mainstream.
Carrying a Big Schtick dissects notions of Jewish masculinity and its perception and practice in America in the 20th century through the lenses of immigration and cultural history. Tracing Jewish masculinity through major themes and events including both World Wars, the Holocaust, American Zionism, Israeli statehood, and the Six-Day War, this work establishes that the struggle of this process can shed light on the changing dynamics in religious, social, and economic American Jewish life.
This event took place on June 18, 2024.

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