| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, editors. Orientalism and the Jews. (The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series.) Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press. 2005. Pp. xl, 285. Cloth $60.00, paper $26.00.

This volume of collected essays, edited by Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, is a stunning example of the productive engagement of Jewish history with postcolonial studies. The excitement that this volume ought to produce stems not from the introduction of any new or unfamiliar theory or methodology; after all, Edward Said's work on orientalism has been central for decades to a great deal of literary and historical work. Rather, it stems, first of all, from the engagement with themes and issues that, at least in North America, are not all that well known or explored, and, given the history of the Middle East in the past half century, may come as a real surprise to many: the interchangeability of Jews and Arabs, Jews and Muslims, in the Western imagination; the degree to which Jews themselves identified with Arabic and Muslim culture, and indeed participated in it for centuries; and the variety of peoples who over the centuries have at one time or another been identified as "Jews" or whose origins have been explained with reference to ancient Israel.

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