The character of Ziva David on the TV show NCIS is a classic stereotype of the Israeli women. Via Wikicommons When you google “israeli woman,” the first thing you see is the images. Sexy, tough, military, or all three. After the images, you get the expected results: a Wikipedia page for “Women in Israel,” an…
This week marked the landmark 200th episode of the CBS procedural “NCIS.” The drama is about a team of agents at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. (In one early episode, they’re described as “the Internal Affairs of the Navy.”) Led by Special Agent Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), the team members balance their personal lives with…
I can’t help but think that NCIS officer Ziva David is not what Max Nordau had in mind when he developed the concept of Muskeljudentum (Muscular Judaism). Living in an environment of anti-Semitic discourse that saw the Jewish male as sickly and weak, Nordau advocated a physical Judaism that would challenge anti-Semites by carving a…
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