Non­fic­tion

Hebrew Ori­en­tal­ism: Jew­ish Engage­ment with Arabo-Islam­ic Cul­ture in Late Ottoman and British Palestine

Mostafa Hus­sein
December 19, 2024

How Jew­ish writ­ers in late Ottoman and British Man­date Pales­tine used Arabo-Islam­ic cul­ture to advance the goals of Zionism

In the decades before the estab­lish­ment of a Jew­ish state in 1948, native and immi­grant Jews in Pales­tine medi­at­ed between Jew­ish and Arab cul­tures while nav­i­gat­ing their evolv­ing iden­ti­ties as set­tler colonists. Hebrew Ori­en­tal­ism chal­lenges the con­ven­tion­al view that Hebrew thinkers were dis­mis­sive of Arabo-Islam­ic cul­ture, reveal­ing how they both adopt­ed and adapt­ed ele­ments of it that enhanced Zion­ist aims.

Draw­ing on a wealth of sources rang­ing from Ara­bic medieval chron­i­cles, trav­el nar­ra­tives, and poet­ry to mod­ern Hebrew geog­ra­phy and botany texts, Mostafa Hus­sein pro­vides a nuanced under­stand­ing of Hebrew ori­en­tal­ism by focus­ing on the prac­ti­cal activ­i­ties of Hebrew writ­ers, such as recu­per­at­ing the Jew­ish past in the East, con­struct­ing Jew­ish indi­gene­ity, con­sol­i­dat­ing Jew­ish ties to Palestine’s land­scape, enhanc­ing under­stand­ing of the Hebrew Bible, reviv­ing Hebrew lan­guage, and under­tak­ing trans­la­tion projects. Through the lens of a diverse group of Jew­ish intel­lec­tu­als – rang­ing from Pales­tine-born Sephardi/​Oriental and Ashke­nazi Jews to East­ern Euro­pean immi­grants – he unveils the com­plex real­i­ties of cul­tur­al exchange and knowl­edge pro­duc­tion, high­light­ing the dual role of these intel­lec­tu­als in con­nect­ing with the East and pro­mot­ing Zion­ist aspi­ra­tions. Hus­sein offers fresh insights into the role of schol­ar­ly prac­tices in advanc­ing new per­spec­tives on the region and its peo­ples and forg­ing a mod­ern Zion­ist Hebrew identity.

Illu­mi­nat­ing the intri­cate and often con­tra­dic­to­ry engage­ment of Hebrew schol­ars with Arabo-Islam­ic cul­ture, Hebrew Ori­en­tal­ism informs con­tem­po­rary dis­cus­sions of post­colo­nial­ism and set­tler colo­nial­ism and enrich­es our under­stand­ing of the his­tor­i­cal dynam­ics between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.

zion­ism
schol­ar­ship
inter­faith

Discussion Questions

Hebrew Ori­en­tal­ism offers a new per­spec­tive on the world­view of Jew­ish thinkers in late Ottoman and British Pales­tine. Draw­ing on an expan­sive array of Hebrew and Ara­bic sources, Mostafa Hos­sein recon­structs how both Sephar­di and Ashke­nazi intel­lec­tu­als, such as David Yellin, Abra­ham Shalom Yahu­da, Eliyahu Sapir, Israel Horowitz, and Yosef Yo’el Rivlin, mobi­lized Arabo-Islam­ic cul­ture to for­ward their own Zion­ist com­mit­ments. For exam­ple, in the late Ottoman peri­od, Jew­ish intel­lec­tu­als drew on Ara­bic lit­er­ary and poet­ic forms as a way of enrich­ing mod­ern Hebrew and rein­forc­ing its indige­nous ori­gins. Focus­ing on three main themes of land, lan­guage, and peo­ple, the book finds that a more ​“coop­er­a­tive” approach to Arabo-Islam­ic civ­i­liza­tion abid­ed in the late Ottoman peri­od, while such an approach became entan­gled in polemi­cized dis­course dur­ing the British man­date (1917 – 1948), as the ​“same knowl­edge became strate­gic and instru­men­tal­ized.” Hossein’s nuanced and sophis­ti­cat­ed analy­sis recov­ers not only how Hebrew schol­ars thought about the ​“East” and its rela­tion­ship to Jew­ish his­to­ry and texts, but also about their own indi­gene­ity and belonging.

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