A history of knowledge transfer of Oriental Studies stretching along an axis from Germany to Palestine/Israel.
 
This study examines the history of Zionist academic Orientalism—referred to throughout as Oriental studies, the term contemporary English speakers would have used—in light of its German-Jewish background, as a history of knowledge transfer stretching along an axis from Germany to Palestine. The transfer, which took place primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, involved questions about the re-establishment, far from Germany, of a field of knowledge with deep German roots. Like other German-Jewish scholars arriving in Palestine at the time, some of the Orientalist agents of transfer did so out of Zionist conviction as olim (immigrants making aliyah, or literally “ascending” to the homeland), while others joined them later as refugees from Nazi Germany; both groups were integrated into the institutional apparatus of the Hebrew University. Unlike other fields of knowledge or professions, however, the transfer of Orientalist knowledge was unique in that the axis involved an essential change in the nature of its encounter with the Orient: from a textual-scientific encounter at German universities, largely disconnected from contemporary issues to a living, substantive, and unmediated encounter with an essentially Arab region—and the escalating Jewish-Arab conflict in the background. Within the new context, German-Jewish Orientalist expertise was charged with political and cultural significance it had not previously faced, fundamentally influencing the course of the discipline’s development in Palestine and Israel.

"“An invaluable work concerned with the rise of Israeli Orientalism during the mandatory period and early Israel. Levy deserves special praise for providing a very nuanced history and a highly innovative book that will be received with great interest by different communities and audiences in the United States—Jewish historians, Israel studies scholars, Middle East historians and scholars, Palestine studies scholars, and anyone interested in Orientalism (Said, and unSaid).”" - Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, New York University