The Jew, the Beauty, and the Beast - by Naama Harel Paperback

About the Book

The Jew, the Beauty, and the Beast critically examines the entanglements between Jewishness, gender, and animality in modernist Hebrew fiction. Analyzing the effeminate Jew vis-à-vis the animalized woman through cutting-edge theoretical frameworks of animal studies and posthumanism, alongside the established scholarship of Hebrew/Jewish literature and gender studies, this book innovatively revisits the Hebrew literary canon.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"For anyone who has wondered why it's always men tending meat on the grill, Harel provides an answer. Animals--in the slaughterhouse, on the table, in the house, and on the streets--define gender roles in modernist Hebrew literature. Riding a thrilling new wave of animal studies, Harel brilliantly reveals the hidden links among Jews, genders, and animals."--Beth A. Berkowitz "author of Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud"

"Harel's copiously researched and erudite book deftly examines the interrelation of Jewishness and animality in Modernist Hebrew literature. What emerges from her weaving together of ancient Judaic sources and contemporary gender and human-animal studies is a wonderfully syncretic and innovative analysis that elegantly, and importantly, fills a gap in this scholarship."--Russell Samolsky "associate professor in the Department of English, University of California, Santa Barbara"

About the Author

NAAMA HAREL is the director of the Hebrew Program at Columbia University and the cochair of Columbia University Seminar on Human-Animal Studies. She is the author of Kafka's Zoopoetics: Beyond the Human-Animal Barrier.