Abstract:

How does the Ultra-Orthodox literature describe the male body? What does the body represent? What is the ideal male body?

This book is a philosophical-theological journey about the different images of the male body in the Ultra-Orthodox literature after the holocaust.  The choice in the body as the center of the research comes from the fact that the body is the axis by which this community tries to understand its meaning and its role in life.

In the first part of the book, the writer explains the “problem of the body” and the different ways the Ultra-Orthodox theology deals with it. These different and even contradictory voices can teach the reader about the shifting of ideas inside the Ultra-Orthodox thought in the last decades. The second part of the book focuses on the image of the ideal body and describes how the rabbis train their bodies to reach ultimate form.