Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The New Orient: German-Jewish Orientalism in Palestine/Israel
A New Orient explores the German-Jewish roots of Zionist and Israeli Oriental Studies as a history of knowledge transfer between Germany and Palestine/Israel. While German Orientalism is often characterized as a non-colonial, philological discipline, its migration to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 1920s and ’30s transformed it. This book investigates how scholars trained in the German tradition adapted their expertise to a fundamentally Arab space against the backdrop of an escalating national conflict.
Moving beyond the traditional focus on state security needs from the 1960s, this study examines the formative years (1926–1963) through the themes of Germanness, Zionism, and Statism. Utilizing Actor-Network Theory and a vast corpus of multi-lingual archival material, the book reveals how the German Orientalist legacy was utilized to promote both Arab-Jewish rapprochement and diplomatic efforts. Ultimately, it demonstrates that German Orientalism, while not originally an applied colonial discipline, was pivotally reshaped by its new context to serve political and national purposes in Palestine/Israel.
Amit Levy is a cultural and intellectual historian specializing in modern European, Middle Eastern, and Jewish history, imperial history, and the global history of knowledge. His research examines how ideas, scholarly practices, and institutions migrate across borders and take shape in imperial and colonial contexts, bridging Central European and British history with global and transnational perspectives.