Wiesbeck, Tilman

Modern Hebrew and Arabic are the languages I have learned at the Institute for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich. This enables me to combine different fields of study. I am especially interested in the contact between religions, languages, and people. For example, such forms of contact or expressions and results thereof include Jewish receptions of Islam, Judeo-Arabic as the main language spoken in Jewish communities in the Middle Ages, and the arrival of the first Jewish immigrants to Eretz Israel/Palestine at the end of the 19th century and their encounter with local Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities.

During my undergraduate studies, I focused on Jewish and Muslim oral traditions (i.e. rabbinic literature and ḥadīṯ) as well as on non-canonical Jewish and Muslim texts that date back to the 7th through 10th centuries. Thanks to professorial guidance, I also developed an interest in reformative aspects of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement and its adherents’ motivations for researching Judeo-Arabic literature.

In the course of my graduate studies, and also on account of my time as an exchange student at Tel Aviv University, my interests expanded to include modern times as well. While still working with predominantly medieval Judeo-Arabic manuscripts, I am now also studying modern Jewish-Arabic literature, writings of diaspora communities and their relationship to host- and homeland, and (self-)perceptions of Arab Jews (Mizraḥīm) in Israel – all of these as expressions of cultural junctures. Conceptually, I am interested in how colonialism and orientalism affect our fields of study and societies in the present.

With my acquired understanding for cultures, I intend to work as a journalist and counter simplified societal conceptions, othering, and framing in contemporary (German) media. I would thereby hope to contribute to acknowledging and increasing cultural space for the pluralistic and diverse society I see in Germany today.

Areas of Interest

Arabic-speaking Jews, (post)colonialism, Orientalism, transnationalism, media science

Historical Periods of Interest

6th through 10th centuries, 19th through 21th centuries

Positions

Education