The Hebrew Orient

Examines the role that images of Palestine played in the construction of prewar Jewish American identity.

In the decades before the establishment of the State of Israel, striking images of Palestine circulated widely among Jewish Americans. These images visualized "the Orient" for American viewers, creating the possibility for Jewish Americans to understand themselves through imagining "Oriental" counterparts. In The Hebrew Orient, Jessica L. Carr shows how images of the Holy Land made Jewish Americans feel at home in the United States by imagining "the Orient" as heritage. Carr's analyses of periodicals from Hadassah and the Zionist Organization of America, art calendars from the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, the Jewish Encyclopedia, and the Jewish exhibit at the 1933 World's Fair are richly illustrated. What emerges is a new understanding of the place of Orientalism in American Zionism. Creating a narrative about their origins, Jewish Americans looked east to understand themselves as Westerners.