Negotiating Masculinity and Identity as a Jewish British Male

In this book, Dr. Anthony Nicholls uses a series of in-depth interviews to investigate how young Jews talk about their Jewishness, Britishness, and masculinity. From his analysis, he argues that Jewishness is constructed between adherence to halachic requirement on one hand, and Jewishness experienced as cultural affinity to history, family, and tradition without recourse to halacha on the other hand. He further argues that Britishness is experienced between varying degrees of nationalistic localism against cosmopolitan liberalism played out against a backdrop of Britain contrasted with the rest of the world, and also London against the rest of Britain. Nicholls rejects the view that masculinity is constructed in the inherently unstable terms of physicality against intellectualism. Instead, he argues that it is better considered as lying in a range between competitive hegemonic masculinity and a cooperative model with which physicality and intellectualism combine to produce a more stable and emotionally satisfying mode of living.