The Sexual Body of the Young Jew as an Arena of Ideological Struggle, 1821–1948

This article analyzes professional discourse on masturbation to illustrate how child sexuality serves as a site for symbolic ideological struggles. Sex instruction manuals written in central Europe in the nineteenth century Palestine and Israel in the twentieth century are the basis for broader discussions on religious and scientific discourse on child and adolescent sexuality within the Jewish communities. By tracing the development of new forms of expert knowledge, we show how expert discourse on masturbation gradually transformed it from a symbolic moral evil into a medical disease and a psychological problem, before declaring it a legitimized behavior.