The graduate program in Jewish and Arabic Studies was born from the merger of two Programs connected to the Department of Oriental Letters, of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences of the University of São Paulo, namely the program of the Hebrew language, literature and culture and the Arabic language, literature and culture.

Together, these two programs conceived that the linguistic, historical, geographical, thematic and methodological affinities of the respective areas, evidenced by the researches developed, both by professors and by graduate students, justified the fusion of both programs into one. The distinctive trait of this Program is its interdisciplinarity, understood as practices oriented by defined epistemologies and methodologies. 

The interdisciplinary structure of the Program was not fortuitous, but the result of the intrinsic specificities of the two areas of concentration: 1) Jewish studies, and 2) Arabic studies. Each area of concentration has its own research lines, under which specific projects are developed. Finally, there are three lines of research, which are common to both areas.