Orientalism and the Jews

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 imagined and represented in Western civilization has been the subject of intense cross-disciplinary scrutiny, much of it under the rubric of orientalism. This debate, sparked by the 1978 publication of Bdward Said's identifies the as the Islamic world and to a lesser extent 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 attempts to understand its relations with both its monotheistic Others - Muslims and Jews. According to the editors, Jews have almost always been present whenever occidentals imagined the East; and the Western image of the Muslim Orient continues to be formed in conjunction with Western perceptions of the Jewish people. Bringing together essays by an array of international scholars in a wide range of disciplines, and the Jews opens exciting new fields in Jewish history and Post-Colonial studies.