Climate-based accounts of the Oriental body could not apply to wandering Jews

Evidence

Medieval Europeans believed that the nature of the eastern and southeastern climates created men who were overemotional, irrational, and given to lascivious behavior; their darker skin and hair were attributed to the heat of the sun. The Oriental body, rather than Islamic theology, increasingly came to be the focus of Western perceptions of the Muslim. Because the Jews, unlike the Muslims, were seen as permanently in exile, belonging nowhere yet found everywhere, the climate-based explanation of the nature of the Oriental body could not simply be transferred to the Jewish body. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 228

Categorization

• XREF: The climate-determinism of bodies recalls the ADDENDUM articles on how geographic place shapes perceived moral character — here applied to why Jews were exempt from the Orientalizing model.