Touro Scholar Graduate School of Jewish Studies Publications and Research Graduate School of Jewish Studies 2015 Dressing Up: Religion and Ethnicity in Israeli National Dolls Maya Balakirsky Katz Touro College,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://touroscholar.touro.edu/gsjs_pubs Part of the Gender and Sexuality Commons, Jewish Studies Commons, and the Race and Ethnicity Commons Recommended Citation Katz, M. B. (2015). Dressing up: Religion and ethnicity in Israeli national dolls. Religion & Gender, 5(1), 71-90. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Touro Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate School of Jewish Studies Publications and Research by an authorized administrator of Touro Scholar. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Vol. 5, no. 1 (2015), 71-90 | DOI: 10.18352/rg.10108 Dressing Up: Religion and Ethnicity in Israeli National Dolls MAYA BALAKIRSKY KATZ* Abstract This article considers Israel’s national image both at home and abroad through the framework of Israeli costume dolls, looking specifically at the way that gender played a role in Israel’s national image as it travelled from domestic production to international reception. Initially, predominantly female doll makers produced three main types of Israeli dolls, but over time the religious Eastern European male doll triumphed in the pantheon of national types. Produced for retail sale to non-Hebrew speaking tourists by immigrant woman, the Eastern European religious male doll came to represent Israel abroad while the market pushed representations of the Middle Eastern Jewish woman and the native sabra child to the side-lines.