Orientalist texts reveal most about their authors’ own cultures

Evidence

Zweig’s appropriation of orientalist discourse stems from a complex amalgamation of romantic, mythical, and even völkisch notions circulating within his cultural orbit during the time in which he produced The Face of East European Jewry. Like other orientalist texts, it is perhaps most profound when directed not merely at the ideas it attempts to advance but also at the culture (and, of course, at the author) from which these ideas came. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 443