Review - American Jewish Archives

Book Reviews 219
mestic and social power and thereby to renegotiate the boundaries
between private and public spheres"(124).
In the final chapter, "The Sexual Politics in Jewish Identity," Hyman
provides an innovative exploration of anti-Semitism, gender, and
power relations in assessing Jewish men's response to their changed
role in society. According to Hyman, Jewish men desired to gain
economic and social power, but faced restrictions in society, and
"male Jews defined an identity that not only distinguished them from
women but also displaced their own anxieties upon women"(124-5).
Men as the target of anti-Semitism faced claims about their physical
weakness; attacks on their masculinity led them to "distinguish themselves
from women and to eliminate any hint of the feminine in
their self-presentation"(i53). Mentioning "Muscular Jewry" as one counterpoint
to anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish men's physical frailty, Hyman
remarks that physical fitness and nationalism became linked in
Zionism. Hyman reveals how women in America became the focus of
men struggling with their gender and Jewish identities, so that
American Jewish men "would inscribe their struggles upon the
character of women, and particularly upon their mothers"(157).
The representations of Jewish American mothers in the ~gjos, therefore,
revealed negative portrayals in the press and popular culture.
This chapter also examines American Jewish women's efforts to
participate on equal terms in communal institutions and to gain
education and expand their activities. Hyman concludes about
gender and assimilation in modern Jewish life that "Jewish men
and women have confronted the challenges of Western society on
different turfs. As they constructed Jewish identities appropriate to
their circumstances their behavior also differed because they experienced
the process of assimilation differentlyn(168).
Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jaoish History will interest historians
in Jewish studies, women's studies, gender studies, ethnicity, and
immigration. The omission of any visual representations and material
culture evidence in the text, however, detracts from points about
Jewish images, material life, and gender; graphics in the Jewish press,
advertisements for American products pitched to Jewish women, or
an actual representation of the male gender would strengthen the
discussion. In revising these lectures for publication, both written
and visual sources ought to have been considered in the book.