Salvage ethnography imagines diaspora Jews as evolutionarily isolated specimens

Evidence

Cultures like those of Jews from the Libyan desert are presented as petrified cultures, or, more accurately, the product of what could be called Galapagos Jews, untouched by foreign influences. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 723

Categorization

• CANDY: ‘Galapagos Jews’ is a wonderfully absurd and biting image — a great anecdote for a conversation about how colonial frameworks imagine other cultures.