Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Abstract
This essay focuses on the “rhetoric of paternal affliction” that late eighteenthcentury
Italian Jewish merchant patriarchs employed in letters and supplications
addressing threats to their intertwined paternal and commercial authority,
particularly when filial disobedience or apostasy was involved. I examine this
rhetoric as an emotional style that illuminates Jewish merchant masculinity.
Although the image of a suffering father seems to deviate from known early
modern models of hegemonic masculinity, within the context of the eighteenthcentury
culture of sensibility this rhetoric emphasized Jewish patriarchs’ honesty
and righteousness, beseeching male compassion and sympathy. By performing
vulnerability vis-à-vis Jewish associates, as well as Jewish and state authorities, the
vocal expression of paternal affliction was meant to reinforce threatened
mercantile patriarchal power. This complicates our understanding of early
modern fatherhood, demonstrating that a sentimental display of masculine
helplessness went hand in hand with better-known notions of hegemonic paternal
authority.
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Comments
This essay originally appeared in issue 24, n.2 (2023) of Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. DOI: 10.48248/issn.2037-741X/14445