For Jewish scholars orientalism expressed cultural anxiety, not imperial confidence

Evidence

For many central European scholars, among them Jews, orientalism was more than a system of domination. It could be genuinely celebratory and inspirational, as orientalism sometimes entailed a valorization of the Muslim Other. For Jews, such an exercise was often tantamount to a search for roots, for authenticity, and for oriental role models. Thus, rather than a straightforward means of asserting colonial, corporeal, and cultural authority, orientalism could be a profound expression of one’s own cultural anxiety and insecurity, one that could provoke deep-seated fears of inferiority. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 376

Categorization

• XREF: Directly challenges Said’s orientalism thesis; connects to postcolonial theory debates about who gets to be called an orientalist.
• SEED: Could support an essay on how scholarly fields get claimed for political projects when their actual practitioners contradict the narrative.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 376