Culture of Tough Jews

David Moscowitz (PhD, Indiana University) is Assistant Professor of Communication, Associate Director of Women’s and Gender Studies, and a faculty affiliate in film studies, Jewish studies, and African American studies at the College of Charleston.

• Contents: The Clout of the Defier: The Vital Jew in Shadow – Gangsters, Assimilation, and Performative Paradox – The Vital Gangsta and Postmodern Blackface – Heroism and Transformative Performativity – Regen(d)erating Exile: Deterritorializing the Zionist Hero – Conclusion: Vital Identity + Politics.

«Writing at the intersections of identity and politics, rhetoric and culture, gender and ethnicity, David Moscowitz offers a compelling account of Jewish public culture and the tropes of the tough Jew and the vital Jew. Astutely attentive to contemporary global politics, the book theorizes rhetorical regeneration in ways that challenge public and scholarly understandings of intercultural dialogue and rhetorical action.» (Lisa A. Flores, University of Colorado)«David Moscowitz brings to bear his considerable skills as a rhetorical critic of popular culture to bring the vital Jew out of the shadows. He makes a profound and insightful case for Diasporic Jewishness, that its vital Jew is as much a model for the Israeli as the American Jew. Listening to Moscowitz’s gentle and firm voice, the figure of the tough Jew is led to recognize his toughness as a response to his fear, his forceful defiance of a threatening world as the corollary of his attachment to victimhood, and his unquestioning allegiance to his tribe as the denial of rich, plural, self-questioning Jewish traditions. ‘A Culture of Tough Jews’ is compelling reading for rhetorical and cultural critics interested in ethnicity, masculinity, and identity in contemporary American life, and for all those concerned with contemporary Jewish life and identity.» (Jon Simons, Indiana University)