The Jew, the Beauty, and the Beast

Gender and Animality in Modernist Hebrew Fiction

Naama Harel

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9781978841727
  9781978841734
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978841741
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Jewish Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Jews, women, and animals have been notoriously considered in Western thought as antithetical to the "civilized," and therefore parallel. The trope of the womanized Jewish man has been widely recognized as a staple in otherizing portrayals of European Jews, as well as their self-perception. Similarly, ecofeminist critique has addressed the ubiquitous depiction of the animalized woman throughout history. Yet, the interconnection between the effeminization of Jews and the animalization of women has been overlooked. 

The Jew, the Beauty, and the Beast critically explores the tangled interplay between Jewishness, gender, and animality and its manifestation in modernist Hebrew fiction. Through interdiscursive analysis and close readings, the effeminate Jew is examined vis-à-vis the animalized woman. Intertwining cutting-edge theoretical frameworks of posthumanism and animal studies with established scholarship of Hebrew literature, Jewish studies, and gender studies, Naama Harel offers new Hebrew literary historiography and innovative perspectives on canonical works by Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Devorah Baron, Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, Yosef Haim Brenner, Uri Nissan Gnessin, and David Vogel.
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Animalized Women, Effeminate Jews
• Part I. Transgressing Predator-Prey Dynamics
• Part II. The Shared Oppression of Women and Animals in Devorah Baron’s Work
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• About the Author