Men of Valor and Anxiety
Polish-Jewish Masculinities and the Challenge of Modernity
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Indiana University Press
Published:7th Oct '25
£76.00
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At the turn of the twentieth century, Jewish men in Eastern Europe lived in a social reality in which both Jewish and non-Jewish men and women tested, debated, and redesigned masculinities.
Men of Valor and Anxiety explores how religion, class divisions, antisemitism, new domesticity, and militarization changed masculine ideas and practices in Eastern Europe between the 1890s and 1930s. Author Mariusz Kalczewiak applies recent paradigms of gender theory and social history to offer a sensitive historical analysis of personal memoirs, advice books, archives of Jewish institutions, and journalistic commentaries. This study ventures into the military barracks, yeshivot study halls, fraternity parties, and Jewish homes to demonstrate how complex Jewish masculinities were between orthodoxy, acculturation, Polish and Jewish nationalisms, and changing notions of domesticity and profession.
Focusing on an ethnic minority in a country that first struggled for independence and later embarked on an accelerated modernization project, Men of Valor and Anxiety is the first book to demonstrate how the links between ethnicity and gender were constructed within both global and local contexts.
"Men of Valor and Anxiety explores daily lives of Polish Jews through the lens of gender norms, roles, and practices in the aftermath of the Great War. In doing so, Mariusz Kałczewiak reveals a fascinating tapestry of Polish Jewish masculinities both embedded and negotiated in the context of general European and Polish norms. Richly researched and argued with intellectual depth and nuance, this book brings social and cultural history and gender studies into sharp focus. Kałczewiak encourages us to revisit geographic, ethnic, and religious assumptions about lived modern Jewish experience."—Natalia Aleksiun, author of Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust
"Mariusz Kalczewiak's study is an innovative, long-overdue social analysis of gender in early twentieth-century Eastern European Jewish communities. It is a necessary antidote to portrayals of Polish-Jewish men as backwardly caught in the world halakhic orthodoxy. Based on archival materials, this book portrays the rich, diverse, and contested world of Jewish masculinities in Poland at the eve of the Holocaust. A book full of surprises."—Bjorn Krondorfer, author of The Holocaust and Masculinities: Critical Inquiries into the Presence and Absence of Men
"In this masterful book, Kalczewiak brilliantly demonstrates how Polish Jewish men navigated between tradition and modernity to forge highly complex identities. From synagogues to boxing rings, from barracks to cafés, their masculinity took shape through daily struggle—before the annihilation of the Holocaust."—Ivan Jablonka, author of A History of Masculinity: From Patriarchy to Gender Justice
"Kalczewiak offers an erudite treatment of Polish-Jewish masculinity. He demonstrates that this masculinity had both Jewish and non-Jewish influences and embraced physical culture without eschewing religious culture—a conclusion that is made all the more convincing because of the impressive breadth of his historical sources in Polish, Yiddish, German, Hebrew, and English."—Sarah Imhoff, author of Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism
ISBN: 9780253073822
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
428 pages