At the turn of the twenty-first century, 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 Edward Said's Orientalism identifies the Orient 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, in their introduction to the volume, Kalmar and Penslar argue that orientalism is based on the Christian West's attempts to understand and manage its relations with both of its monotheistic Others--Muslims and Jews.
According to the editors, Jews have almost always been present whenever occidentals talked about or imagined the East; and the Western image of the Muslim Orient has been formed and continues to be formed in inextricable conjunction with Western perceptions of the Jewish people.
Bringing together essays by an array of international scholars in a wide range of disciplines, Orientalism and the Jews demonstrates that, since the Middle Ages, Jews have been seen in the Western world as both occidental and oriental.
Jews formed the model for medieval depictions of Muslim warriors.
Representations of biblical Jews in early modern Europe provided essential sustenance for Western fictions about the Muslim world.
And many of the Western protagonists of imperialism discovered real or imaginary Jews wherever their expeditions took them.
Today orientalist attitudes by Israelis target not only Arabs but also the mizrahi (oriental) Israelis with roots in the Arab world as Others.
About the Author RUTH KARK, Professor of Geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has published extensively on the historical geography of the Middle East and Palestine/Israel.
MARGALIT SHILO is Associate Pr.
Brandeis University Press Orientalism and the jews, paperback/ivan davidson kalmar
