More in ‘Jewish body’

“Thou shalt not make graven images.” Thus reads the second commandment, which has been widely interpreted by Jews to mean that they are forbidden from depicting the human body. Yet, according to art historian Eliane Strosberg, during the 20th century Jewish artists in Europe and the United States defied that prohibition and almost exclusively ...

Melvin Konner
Circumcision, laws governing intercourse, eugenics, big noses, fleshy lips—all of these figure somewhere into notions of Jews and their physical selves. In the new book The Jewish Body, out now from Schocken and Nextbook’s Jewish Encounters Series, anthropologist and physician Melvin Konner explores some of these ideas.
He spoke with Nextbook about physical stereotypes of ...