Overview
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.
Full Product Details
Author: Naama Harel
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Imprint: Rutgers University Press
Weight: 0.454kg
ISBN: 9781978841734
ISBN 10: 1978841736
Pages: 184
Publication Date: 11 November 2025
Recommended Age: From 18 to 99 years
Audience:
General/trade
,
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
General
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Availability: Not yet available
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Reviews
""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""
""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""
Author Information
NAAMA HAREL is the co-chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Human-Animal Studies and faculty at Columbia’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. She is the author of Kafka’s Zoopoetics: Beyond the Human-Animal Barrier.
