Zweig channeled orientalist discourse toward Eastern Jews within his own community

Evidence

The colonialist and imperialist stakes of orientalism have indeed been widely debated—in particular in the French and British contexts—and such ideas as the “noble savage” strike a certain resonance in Zweig, whose patronizing tone toward the pure, simple, primitive people cannot be altogether disregarded. And yet in Zweig’s case, what he envisaged first in the Gemeinschaft of eastern Jewry in Lithuania, then in Palestine, and finally in what he considered another chance for utopian socialism in the German Democratic Republic (to which he returned, after becoming disillusioned with Jewish nationalism, a mere two months after Israel’s statehood) is perhaps somewhat different. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 443

Categorization

• XREF: The trajectory — Lithuania Gemeinschaft, then Palestine, then disillusionment with Jewish nationalism and return to the GDR — is a striking personal arc worth remembering.