For many Evangelical Christians, a trip to the Holy Land is an integral part of practicing their faith. Arriving in groups, most of these pilgrims are guided by Jewish Israeli tour guides. For more than three decades, Jackie Feldman-born into an Orthodox Jewish family in New York, now an Israeli citizen, scholar, and licensed guide-has been leading tours, interpreting Biblical landscapes, and fielding questions about religion and current politics. In this book, he draws on pilgrimage and tourism studies, his own experiences, and interviews with other guides, Palestinian drivers and travel agents, and Christian pastors to examine the complex interactions through which guides and tourists "co-produce" the Bible Land. He uncovers the implicit politics of travel brochures and religious souvenirs. Feldman asks what it means when Jewish-Israeli guides get caught up in their own performances or participate in Christian rituals, and reflects on how his interactions with Christian tourists have changed his understanding of himself and his views of religion.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Feldman successfully shows how deeply the political and religious dimensions are intertwined and enacted when guides and pilgrims navigate a sacred landscape marked with politically potent barriers. This kind of material makes A Jewish Guide in the Holy Land a wonderful case study to use in teaching about pilgrimage and tourism in a space marked by multiple narratives of competing nationalisms.
(American Ethnologist) The book is recommended for anyone who has ever visited the Holy Land or worked with groups in it.
(Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations) A comprehensive tour of the implications, challenges and irritations of Christian tourists guided by US-born or Sabra Jewish Israelis sharing a common, often violent history but from unequal power positions - a journey to the mutual other. In a wonderful playful way - in the most serious sense of the word - he describes his own and other guides' paradigmatic experiences as holders of the keys" to Christian pilgrims' experience of the Holy Land. All take part in a journey exploring theology, religion, politics and human nature in an enormously complex field of encounter. An intense and sometimes breathtaking, sometimes very funny, learning experience for every reader - Jewish and Christian, religious and nonreligious, pilgrim or skeptic.
- Professor Christian Staffa (Evangelische Akademie zu Berlin) Here, the author chronicles his experiences shepherding tourists, mostly Protestants, on pilgrimages to the Holy Land. . . . A unique lens through which to view the conflicted Promised Land.
(Kirkus Reviews) One of the personal points that he makes is that guiding Christian pilgrims and tourists contributed towards his development of his Israeli identity. It is interesting that working myself in this specialized industry also made me more aware of my Palestinian identity and in thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it is the "Land" that we both share. Quite a bit of the Old and New Testament writing; often enough, is expressed metaphorically. In other words, what was written was not always what was meant. The Old Testament writers and Christ himself expressed themselves in parables, allegories, and proverbs, drawing images from the land and its culture. To me it is clear that this shared land that gave rise to two national narratives, can and must incorporate these narratives. It is truly a one Land with two Nations and three Monotheistic Religions.
- Hani Abu Dayyeh (Near East Tours, President)
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
20 b&w illus., 1 table - 1 Tables, black and white
Maße
Höhe: 235 mm
Breite: 157 mm
Dicke: 16 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-253-02125-0 (9780253021250)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Jackie Feldman is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is author of Above the Death Pits, Beneath the Flag: Youth Voyages to Poland and the Performance of Israeli National Identity. He has been a licensed tour guide in Jerusalem for over three decades.
1. How Guiding Christians Made Me Israeli
2. Guided Holy Land Pilgrimage-Sharing the Road
3. Opening Their Eyes: Performance of a Shared Protestant-Israeli Bible Land
4. Christianizing the Conflict: Bethlehem and the Separation Wall
5. The Goods of Pilgrimage: Tips, Souvenirs, and the Moralities of Exchange
6. The Seductions of Guiding Christians
7. Conclusions: Pilgrimage, Performance, and the Suspension of Disbelief
