Given its origins, how much is the Arabic studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem still influenced by its German origins? To what extent is it influenced today by the sociopolitical reality around it? Five generations after its founding, the department continues to navigate the tensions between these two intellectual realities. This is an ethnography of the Arabic Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The research relies on fieldwork at the Hebrew University in fall 2019 and later interviews with faculty, students, and former students at the department. The research uses interdisciplinary methods such as discourse analysis of the performative aspect of identity and the role language plays in it. The study concludes with the following: while the first generation was German oriented, later generations developed a more nuanced understanding of the field. Part of this nuances stems from later generations including Arab Jews. After 1967, members of the department could interact with Arabic as a lived language in East Jerusalem. Yet, it took until 2019 for a Palestinian Arab to join the tenure system faculty. The paper concludes that while members of the department insist that they are not political, this position is becoming increasingly untenable in a context of the politics of knowledge production, university politics, and the politics of Jerusalem.