A history of knowledge transfer of Oriental Studies stretching along an axis from Germany to Palestine/Israel.
This study examines the history of Zionist academic Orientalismreferred to throughout as Oriental studies, the term contemporary English speakers would have usedin light of its German-Jewish background, as a history of knowledge transfer stretching along an axis from Germany to Palestine. The transfer, which took place primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, involved questions about the re-establishment, far from Germany, of a field of knowledge with deep German roots. Like other German-Jewish scholars arriving in Palestine at the time, some of the Orientalist agents of transfer did so out of Zionist conviction as olim (immigrants making aliyah, or literally ascending to the homeland), while others joined them later as refugees from Nazi Germany; both groups were integrated into the institutional apparatus of the Hebrew University. Unlike other fields of knowledge or professions, however, the transfer of Orientalist knowledge was unique in that the axis involved an essential change in the nature of its encounter with the Orient: from a textual-scientific encounter at German universities, largely disconnected from contemporary issues to a living, substantive, and unmediated encounter with an essentially Arab regionand the escalating Jewish-Arab conflict in the background. Within the new context, German-Jewish Orientalist expertise was charged with political and cultural significance it had not previously faced, fundamentally influencing the course of the disciplines development in Palestine and Israel.
Recenzijas
Recipient of the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award * The Association for Jewish Studies * Levys nuanced history shows that leaders of the School of Oriental Studies made many attempts to lay the foundations for the collaboration of Jewish, Arabic, and Palestinian scholars, though their efforts were often scuttled by nationalist political and economic considerations. A fine model for how to write a fair-minded history of academic institutions in the post-colonial world. -- Suzanne L. Marchand, Louisiana State University An engaging story of German Jewish Orientalists who arrived in Mandatory Palestine, either as refugees or as active Zionists and established the School of Oriental Studies at the Hebrew University. Levy explores the dilemmas faced by these scholars, the tensions between European traditions and Middle Eastern reality, and the escalating struggle between Zionism and Arab nationalism in Middle Eastern studies in Israel. -- Hillel Cohen, The Hebrew University Levy deserves special praise for providing a nuanced history that will be received with great interest by different audiences in the USJewish historians, Israel studies scholars, Middle East historians and scholars, Palestine studies scholars, and anyone interested in Orientalism (Said, and unSaid). -- Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, New York University
Introduction
Critique, counter-critique, transfer and influence: An overview
German Orientalism, German-Jewish Orientalism, and their discontents
Knowledge transfer and its impact: from Germany to Palestine
Scholarly archives and knowledge networks
Chapter
1. The Science of the Orient: The Beginnings of Oriental Studies at
the Hebrew
University
German inheritance: the development of modern German Orientalism and the
question of
applied science
Judaism with the Orient for an Orient without Judaism: preparations for the
foundation
of the School of Oriental Studies
The Goldziher proposal
Jewish Studies, Oriental Studies, and the Humanities
Initial plans: Mayer, Margolis
The Horovitz Plan and the establishment of the institute
Berlin-Frankfurt-Jerusalem: the impact of ideas and material conditions
The research projects
Teachers and scholars
Outside the institute: Avraham Shalom Yahuda, Israel Ben-Zeev
A German image: On the character of the German legacy
Chapter
2. With its back to the Orient? The School of Oriental Studies and
the
Question of the Arab Scholars
Scholarly love: Relations between the School of Oriental Studies and the Arab
and Muslim
intellectual world
The textual circle
The ethnographic-archaeological circle
The student circle
Invisible and exposed: Intellectual amity and the failure to
institutionalize
The Question of the Arab lecturer
The border line: Dreams of affinity, Zionist reality, and German standards
Chapter
3. The Orient Renewed: The Birth of Israeli Oriental Studies and the
Diplomatic
Mission
The Goitein era: Chronological and thematic expansion beyond the war
The Abandoned Property books
The modern Middle East
The study of Jews from Islamic lands
The Israeli Oriental Society and The New Orient
The Heyd era: The rise of a second generation and the geographical expansion
of Oriental
Studies
3
The conceptual infrastructure
The Institute of Asian and African Studies
Generation gap? The Florence Conference (1958) and generations of Israeli
Oriental
Studies
Truly, Jerusalem has one benefit: Lying within the Orient: Epilogue
Bibliography
Amit Levy is a research fellow in the Department of Israel Studies, University of Haifa. His research focuses on the history of knowledge and migration and their impact on cross-cultural encounters. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford, the University of WisconsinMadison, and the Open University of Israel
