Being ‘Oriental’: Zionist Fantasies of Body, Masculinity and Ethnicity

Referent/in: Yotam Hotam, Hebrew University Jerusalem

The recent rise of interest in Zionist images of body, masculinity and sexuality represents a turn in the study of Zionism. In this context, ‘oriental’ images within early twentieth century Zionist’s concepts of body and masculinity are essential for the understanding of the origins of the Zionist’s gender ideology as well as its relationship to the “real oriental Jews”, meaning Jews who are of Middle Eastern and North African origins, in the early twentieth century as well as after the establishment of the state of Israel.
Within this context, my paper wishes to discuss the ‘oriental’ aspect in early twentieth century’s Zionist culture of the body, and my analysis will focus on the respective activities of different Zionist sport groups in the early twentieth century, such as “Ha’Koach Vienna” or “Maccabi Prag”. In this analysis, I will pivotally argue that the early twentieth century Zionist seminal concepts of a ‘Jewish Body’, ‘Muscle Judaism’ and of Jewish Manhood in general, enclosed fantasies of an ‘oriental’ body and masculinity. I will show how ‘oriental’ fantasies were created to rejuvenate a ‘European’ Jewish ‘masculinity’, however, not by transforming it as a whole, but by constructing an erotic vision of western Jewish masculinity which entailed ‘oriental’ features.