Israeli Orientalism retains nineteenth-century racial discourse the West has shed

Evidence

The same ethos and mentality of inquiry and research in Euro-American academia dominate here as well, except that the nineteenth-century formulations and racial overtones of Western Orientalism have now been shed in the West but oftentimes not so in Israel. This is partly because the Israeli colonialist model still labors in good part under nineteenth-century forms, employing, among other things, a virulent racial discourse that many Orientalists had harnessed in their colonialist representations of the “Orientals.” — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 443 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Jews did produce critical responses that challenged dominant scholarly trends as well as dominant images of the East. Susannah Heschel has pointed out the subversive aspects of Abraham Geiger’s scholarship on both early Christianity and on Muhammad. Indeed, in this context, Geiger may be seen as similar to other Jewish intellectuals who also subverted some aspects of modernity through the participation in the general discourse. It seems to me, however, that Jews did not really offer an alternative approach to orientalism. Religious reform of Judaism by scholars such as Geiger was directed by the intention to divest the religion of its “irrational” aspects and was presented in obvious orientalist terms. Even if one can argue that Jewish orientalists expressed a more positive attitude toward the East than their Christian counterparts, the attempt within Jewish studies to distinguish Judaism from the Muslim East expressed a clearly orientalist dimension. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 637 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Jewish racialization varies with historical stability and splits along West-East rather than unified lines — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion: Race,…, 39; Israeli academia retains the racial discourse Euro-American Orientalism has since shed. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 443; Orientalism remains a distinctly racial project anchored in imperial white supremacy (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Israeli academia retains the racial discourse Euro-American Orientalism has since shed. #corroborates (0.95) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 443
• Jewish orientalists subverted individual claims but never escaped the orientalism framework #complicates (0.80) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 637