Orientalism and the Hebrew Imagination

Description

Calling into question prevailing notions about Orientalism, Yaron Peleg shows how the paradoxical mixture of exoticism and familiarity with which Jews related to Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century shaped the legacy of Zionism. In Peleg's view, the tension between romancing the East and colonizing it inspired a revolutionary reform that radically changed Jewish thought during the Hebrew Revival that took place between 1900 and 1930. Introduction - 1 1. Orientalism and the Jews: Paradoxes of Time, Place, and Culture - 14 2. Staging a Hebrew Renaissance: The Hebrew Bible as an Orientalist Text - 40 3. Out of the Book and into the Desert: The Invention of a Native Hebrew: Culture in Palestine - 75 4. A Jewish Noble Savage? The Limits of Cultural Innovation - 100 Conclusion: The Legacy of Hebrew Orientalism - 126 Selected Bibliography - 143 Index - 150