The Image of the Black in Jewish Culture: A History of the Other »

Dr Abraham Melamed is a Professor in the Department of Jewish History and Thought at the University of Haifa, Israel. His expertise is medieval and early Modern Jewish philosophy, especially political thought and intellectual history. In recent years, Dr Melamed has been working on issues of gender and the attitudes towards the 'other' in the history of Jewish culture. Dr Melamed has published and lectured widely in these fields.

The evolving image of the Black in the history of Jewish culture is being traced here in the conceptual framework of recent post-modern theories of the 'other'. The study focuses on the mechanisms by which an ethno-religious minority group considered by the dominant majority to be the inferior 'other' identifies its own inferior other. While until recently most scholarly attention has been devoted to the attitudes towards the Jews as 'other', this is the first comprehensive discussion of the attitudes of the Jews to their own 'others'.