Orientalism and the Jews

Edited by Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar

In spite of growing globalization there remains in the world a split between the West and the rest. The manner in which this split has been represented in Western civilization was the subject of Edward Said's Orientalism (1978). In this groundbreaking work, Said identified the "Orient" as the Islamic world and to the lesser extant Hindu India. "Orientalism" signifies the way the West imagined this terrain.

Going beyond Said's framework, Kalmar and Penslar argue that orientalism is based on the Christian West's attempt to understand and manage its relations with both of its monotheistic Others - Muslims and Jews. According to the editors, Jews have almost always been present whenever occidentals talked about or imagined the East; and the Western image of the Muslim Orient has been formed and continues to be formed in inextricable conjunction with Western perceptions of the Jewish people. 

Ivan Davidson Kalmar is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. His publications include The Trotskys, and Woody Allens: Portrait of a Culture (1994). Derek J. Penslar is Zacks Professor of History and Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Toronto. His most recent publication is Shylock's Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (2001).

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