For twentiethcentury Jewish immigrants and their children attempting to gain full access to American society performative masculinity was a tool of acculturation However as scholar Miriam Eve Mora demonstrates this performance is consistently challenged by American mainstream society that holds Jewish men outside of the American ideal of masculinity Depicted as weak effeminate cowardly gentle bookish or conflictaverse Jewish men have been ascribed these qualities by outside forces but some have also intentionally subscribed themselves to masculinities at odds with the American mainstream Carrying a Big Schtick dissects notions of Jewish masculinity and its perception and practice in America in the twentieth century through the lenses of immigration and cultural history Tracing Jewish masculinity through major themes and events including both World Wars the Holocaust American Zionism Israeli statehood and the SixDay War this work establishes that the struggle of this process can shed