Hollander, Philip. From Schlemiel to Sabra: Zionist Masculinity and Palestinian Hebrew Literature.

• Author: Tuschling, Lina

Hollander, Philip. From Schlemiel to Sabra: Zionist Masculinity and Palestinian Hebrew Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019.

In From Schlemiel to Sabra, Philip Hollander offers a nuanced and well-researched view on the emergence of Zionist masculinity in the years prior to statehood. A scholar of Israeli literature and culture, Hollander shows that a counter to the dominant narrative of the emergence of Zionist Israeli masculinity, the sabra identity, was developing concurrently: self-evaluative masculinity. With Jewish communities facing existential threats in Europe and Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, the need arrived for reenvisioning Jewish identity that was consistent with Zionist ideals of establishing Israeli statehood and active self-defense. Gender played a crucial role in this attempted transformation in the literary works, as Hollander shows: "Agnon was employing gendered representations to communicate his belief that the Jewish people were in crisis. Portrayed as feminized, the Jewish people needed...