Conflicting German Orientalism: Zionist Arabists and Arab scholars, 1926–1938

Founded in 1926 by a group of mainly German-Jewish Orientalists, the Hebrew University’s School of Oriental Studies in Jerusalem was the primary site of the university’s efforts to achieve ‘rapprochement’ with Arab and Muslim scholars in the Middle East. Using previously unpublished archival material in German, Arabic, Hebrew and English, this article exposes the School’s endeavours in the first decade after its establishment to promote this goal, focusing on the attempts to recruit an Arab member to its ranks. Led by the School’s founder Josef Horovitz, these attempts were ultimately unsuccessful as a result of the inherent contradictions in its existence: an institute whose members are inflexibly committed to the German Orientalist legacy of a philological discipline now transplanted into the living Orient; and an aspired intellectual bridge between Jews and Arabs, built within a Zionist framework limiting its ability to attract local non-Jewish scholars. Following this failure, it was ultimately an Aleppo Jew, Isaac Shamosh, who was recruited to fill this role, his hybrid Arab-Jewish identity meant to bridge this political-cultural gap.