Rereading "decadent" palestinian Hebrew literature: the intersection of zionism, masculinity, and sexuality on Aharon Reuveni's 'Ad Yerushalayim
This article asserts that politics motivated Aharon Reuveni to employ representations of psychic fragmentation and dysfunctional social institutions to portray Palestinian Jewish life in his novelistic trilogy ‘Ad Yerushalayim. These purportedly decadent representations helped him foreground individ...
| Published in: | AJS review |
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| Subtitles: | Research Article |
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Pennsylvania Press
[2015]
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| In: |
AJS review
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Reʾuveni, Aharon 1886-1971
/ Judaism
/ Community
/ Palestine
/ Zionism
/ Masculinity
/ Sexuality
/ Politics
|
| RelBib Classification: | BH Judaism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article asserts that politics motivated Aharon Reuveni to employ representations of psychic fragmentation and dysfunctional social institutions to portray Palestinian Jewish life in his novelistic trilogy ‘Ad Yerushalayim. These purportedly decadent representations helped him foreground individual and collective flaws he saw limiting the early twentieth-century Palestinian Jewish community's development and promote norms he saw as conducive to growth. Thus, as examination of the trilogy's central male figures demonstrates, Reuveni advances a Zionist masculinity grounded in introspectiveness and ongoing commitment to the achievement of communally shared goals. To further support this Zionist masculine form, the trilogy categorizes men who pursue homosocial ties with others who don't maintain this masculinity as homosexuals. Thus gender and sexuality are used to coerce male readers into adopting specific behavioral norms. This attention to gender and sexuality's role in early twentieth-century Palestinian Hebrew fiction offers a way to grasp its long-overlooked political character. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4541 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Association for Jewish Studies, AJS review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0364009414000622 |