“Seeks to further our understanding of the relationship between perceptions of Jews and the reality of their existence in nineteenth-century France.” —H-France Review Orientalizing the Jew shows how French travelers depicted Jews in the Orient and then brought these ideas home to orientalize Jews living in their homeland during the 19th century. Julie Kalman draws on narratives, personal and diplomatic correspondence, novels, and plays to show how the “Jews of the East” featured prominently in the minds of the French and how they challenged ideas of the familiar and the exotic. Portraits of the Jewish community in Jerusalem, romanticized Jewish artists, and the wealthy Sephardi families of Algiers come to life. These accounts incite a necessary conversation about Jewish history, the history of anti-Jewish discourses, French history, and theories of Orientalism in order to broaden understandings about Jews of the day. “A well-argued, beautifully written, and intellectually stimulating investigation of representations of Middle Eastern and North African Jews by French Catholic pilgrims, writers, artists, and bureaucrats over the 19th century.” —Maud Mandel, author of Muslims and Jews in France “Jews of France, nominally full citizens since the French Revolution . . . experienced uncertainty regarding whether their status would be reversed with each change of government . . . Kalman’s work contributes significantly to an understanding of that insecurity, as she fleshes out the stereotypes that others, officials, artists, authors and intellectuals, projected onto the Jews living among them inside France.” —French History

Originating in the collaboration of the international Research Network “Gender in Antisemitism, Orientalism and Occidentalism” (RENGOO), this collection of essays proposes to intervene in current debates about historical constructions of Jewish identity in relation to colonialism and Orientalism. The network‌’s collaborative research addresses imaginative and aesthetic rather than sociological questions with particular focus on the function of gender and sexuality in literary, scholarly and artistic transformations of Orientalist images. RENGOO’s first publication explores the ways in which stereotypes of the external and internal Other intertwine. With its interrogation of the roles assumed in this interplay by gender, processes of sexualization, and aesthetic formations, the volume suggests new directions to the interdisciplinary study of gender, antisemitism, and Orientalism.

A fascinating analysis of how Jews fit into scholarly debates about Orientalism.

A groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East that is—three decades after its first publication—one of the most important books written about our divided world. "Intellectual history on a high order ... and very exciting." —The New York Times In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding.

The Jews, as one of the Mediterranean nations, began to come into close contact with Greek civilization about the time of Alexander the Great. What has been attempted in the foregoing pages is an interpretation of certain facts of Jewish, Roman, and Greek history within a given period. The literature on the subject is enormous. A short bibliography is appended, in which various books of reference are cited. From these all who are interested in the innumerable controversies that the subject has elicited may obtain full information. Contents: Greek Religious Concepts Roman Religious Concepts Greek and Roman Concepts of Race Sketch of Jewish History between Nebuchadnezzar and Constantine Internal Development of the Jews during the Persian Period The First Contact between Greek and Jew Egypt Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt The Struggle against Greek Culture in Palestine Antiochus the Manifest God The Jewish Propaganda The Opposition The Opposition in Its Social Aspect The Philosophic Opposition The Romans Jews in Rome during the Early Empire The Jews of the Empire till the Revolt The Revolt of 68 C.E. The Development of the Roman Jewish Community The Final Revolts of the Jews The Legal Position of the Jews in the Later Empire

The mass migration of East European Jews and their resettlement in cities throughout Europe, the United States, Argentina, the Middle East and Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries not only transformed the demographic and cultural centers of world Jewry, it also reshaped Jews' understanding and performance of their diasporic identities. Rebecca Kobrin's study of the dispersal of Jews from one city in Poland -- Bialystok -- demonstrates how the act of migration set in motion a wide range of transformations that led the migrants to imagine themselves as exiles not only from the mythic Land of Israel but most immediately from their east European homeland. Kobrin explores the organizations, institutions, newspapers, and philanthropies that the Bialystokers created around the world and that reshaped their perceptions of exile and diaspora.

This study of synagogue music in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century “sets a high standard for historical musicology” (Musica Judaica). In Jewish Religious Music in Nineteenth-Century America: Restoring the Synagogue Soundtrack, Judah M. Cohen demonstrates that Jews constructed a robust religious musical conversation in the United States during the mid- to late-nineteenth century. While previous studies of American Jewish music history have looked to Europe as a source of innovation during this time, Cohen’s careful analysis of primary archival sources tells a different story. Far from seeing a fallow musical landscape, Cohen finds that Central European Jews in the United States spearheaded a major revision of the sounds and traditions of synagogue music during this period of rapid liturgical change. Focusing on the influences of both individuals and texts, Cohen demonstrates how American Jewish musicians sought to balance artistry and group singing, rather than “progressing” from solo chant to choir and organ. Congregations shifted between musical genres and practices during this period in response to such factors as finances, personnel, and communal cohesiveness. Cohen concludes that the “soundtrack” of nineteenth-century Jewish American music heavily shapes how we look at Jewish American music and life in the first part of the twenty-first century, arguing that how we see, and especially hear, history plays a key role in our understanding of the contemporary world around us. Supplemented with an interactive website that includes the primary source materials, recordings of the music discussed, and a map that highlights the movement of key individuals, Cohen’s research defines more clearly the sound of nineteenth-century American Jewry.