Orientalist framing of non-Ashkenazic culture as fossilized enabled marginalization of Mizrahi Jews and Arabs.

Evidence

One further feature distinguished Jewish orientalists from their gentile colleagues. Their own deep Jewish literacy made Islam and Arabic more intuitively intelligible to them than it had been for Christian scholars. Islam’s tradition of commentary and jurisprudence was in general outline entirely familiar to scholars steeped in traditional Jewish culture. Moreover, perturbed by the Europeanization (or indeed, Polonization) of Judaism in the form of Orthodoxy, the Jewish orientalists examined here accepted as a badge of honor the Enlightenment’s pejorative description of Judaism as “oriental.” In an attempt to reify this claim, they turned respectfully to the study of Islam and/or the Jewish culture that flourished under its aegis, hoping that the grandeur and beauty of both could reinvigorate Judaism and weaken the “dominance and authority” they themselves experienced at the hands of Europeans. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 414 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Israel’s ethnic taxonomy fragmented Mizrahi Jews while homogenizing Ashkenazim.; Jews responded to orientalist labeling through rejection, romanticization, or scapegoating traditionalists — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 84; Orientalist scholarship conflates Muslims and Jews into one racial type (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Jewish orientalists embraced the oriental label to reinvigorate Judaism against Europeanization #complicates (0.82) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 414