German Orientalism, Arabic Grammar and the Jewish Education System: The Origins and Effect of Martin Plessner’s “Theory of Arabic Grammar”
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Yonatan Mendel
Abstract
In 1935, a pioneering school textbook was written by the German-Jewish Orientalist Martin Plessner. The work, titled Theory of Arabic Grammar: A Guidebook for Hebrew Schools, was the first textbook written specifically for the Jewish school system and community to focus on Arabic grammar. It strove to link the study of Arabic studies to Hebrew studies, or in Plessner’s words: “to lead the students to a deep understanding of Hebrew… and to highlight the propinquity of the language of the Bible to the Arabic language.” As this article demonstrates, this textbook serves as an educational landmark and is a fascinating case study for the analysis of two processes. First is the idea of transformation of knowledge, exemplified in the way German philology was “translated” into Hebrew in this textbook on many levels – linguistically, discursively, and pedagogically. Second is the impact that this textbook, a beacon of the German philological approach, has had on the study of Arabic grammar in the Jewish education system. In addition to highlighting the profound influence that this early textbook had on the study of Arabic in the Jewish education system, this article argues that along the way – owing to the changing socio-political situation – some of its core ideas, especially that which viewed Arabic and Hebrew as two Semitic sister languages, fell by the wayside.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the ISF (Israeli Science Foundation) under grant 633/12. It was written as part of my post-doctoral research conducted at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and supported by Da‘at HaMakom Center. I would like to thank Prof. Yfaat Weiss for her wise and helpful comments. I would also like to thank Andrea Kirchner for her help with translating some of the texts from German to English.
© 2016 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Josef Horovitz und die Gründung des Instituts für Arabische und Islamische Studien an der Hebräischen Universität in Jerusalem: ein Orientalisches Seminar für Palästina
- Islam in Zion? Yosef Yo’el Rivlin’s Translation of the Qur’an and Its Place Within the New Hebrew Culture
- German Orientalism, Arabic Grammar and the Jewish Education System: The Origins and Effect of Martin Plessner’s “Theory of Arabic Grammar”
- A Man of Contention: Martin Plessner (1900–1973) and His Encounters with the Orient
- Other Contributions
- “Going together without coming together”: “Die Kreatur” (1926–1929) and Why We Should Read German Jewish Journals Differently
- A German Island in Israel: Lea Goldberg and Tuvia Rübner’s Republic of Letters
- The Correspondence between Lea Goldberg and Tuvia Rübner: Selected Letters
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Josef Horovitz und die Gründung des Instituts für Arabische und Islamische Studien an der Hebräischen Universität in Jerusalem: ein Orientalisches Seminar für Palästina
- Islam in Zion? Yosef Yo’el Rivlin’s Translation of the Qur’an and Its Place Within the New Hebrew Culture
- German Orientalism, Arabic Grammar and the Jewish Education System: The Origins and Effect of Martin Plessner’s “Theory of Arabic Grammar”
- A Man of Contention: Martin Plessner (1900–1973) and His Encounters with the Orient
- Other Contributions
- “Going together without coming together”: “Die Kreatur” (1926–1929) and Why We Should Read German Jewish Journals Differently
- A German Island in Israel: Lea Goldberg and Tuvia Rübner’s Republic of Letters
- The Correspondence between Lea Goldberg and Tuvia Rübner: Selected Letters
