x • ACKnoWLEdGMEnts
i continued working on the manuscript of this book as an assistant
professor at Rutgers, where i was blessed with wonderful colleagues in
the Jewish studies and History departments. toby Jones, Hilit surowitz-
israel, Paola tartakoff, Azzan yadin- israel, and yael Zerubavel read key
portions of the manuscript and provided critical advice. other Rutgers
colleagues, including debra Ballentine, douglas Greenberg, Paul Hane-
brink, Jennifer Jones, James Masschaele, sara Milstein, Eddy Portnoy,
Gary Rendsburg, Jeffrey shandler, nancy sinkoff, Camilla townsend,
and Eviatar Zerubavel, helped make my time at Rutgers exciting and
productive. i am grateful as well to Arlene Goldstein and sherry Endick
for their exceptional administrative support.
While revising the manuscript, i benefited from the vast knowledge
and abundant generosity of israel Bartal and israel Gershoni, two scholars
who, to my great fortune, were spending the academic year in new Jersey.
other friends and colleagues who have read and commented on parts
of this manuscript at various stages include Leora Batnitzky, Julia Phil-
lips Cohen, Chaim Cutler, Alan dowty, Jessica fechtor, Benjamin fisher,
Jackie Gram, david Horowitz, Abigail Jacobson, david Koffman, steven
Lipstein, Jessica Marglin, Eli osheroff, Elias sacks, daniel stolz, and Jo-
seph Witztum. omid Ghaemmaghami meticulously reviewed my Arabic
transliterations; Rachel feder painstakingly proofread the entire book;
and Menachem Butler provided electronic biblio graphical support.
Jeremy dauber, Martha Himmelfarb, Jeffrey Prager, Peter schäfer, deb-
ora silverman, and Moulie vidas have offered sage counsel at every turn.
i received valuable feedback when i presented parts of this project
at workshops and symposiums at Brown, Harvard, Princeton, and yale,
and at the annual conferences of the Associations of Jewish studies,
israel studies, and Middle Eastern studies.
i also obtained important suggestions from the anonymous review-
ers of two articles i have published that emerged from this project:
“An Arabic- Zionist talmud: shimon Moyal’s At- Talmud,” Jewish Social
Studies 17, no. 1 (indiana University Press, 2010), and “ ‘their Blood
is Eastern’: shahin Makaryus and Fin de Siècle Arab Pride in the Jewish
‘Race,’ ” Middle Eastern Studies 49, no. 2 (taylor & francis, 2013). i
thank the editors and publishers of these journals for allowing me to
include some of this material here.
i gathered most of the sources on which this book is based during a
year of research in Jerusalem. i am grateful to the staffs of the Central
Zionist Archives, israel state Archives, al- Aqsa Library, Haifa Munici-
pal Archive, Jerusalem Municipal Archive, Lavon Labor Archive, Ris-
hon Lezion Archive, and Central Archives for the History of the Jew-
ish People. i am especially thankful to Haifaʾ al- Khalidi, who not only
opened the renowned Khalidiyya Library to me for weeks on end but