A Jewish Guide in the Holy Land
How Christian Pilgrims Made Me Israeli
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This uneven hybrid of memoir and sociological study from Feldman, currently a lecturer in the sociology and anthropology department at Ben-Gurion University, examines Israel from the perspective of a tour guide. For over three decades, he guided Christian groups on pilgrimage to sites they'd previously only encountered in the pages of the New Testament. Feldman, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household, brings an interesting perspective to this counterintuitive work, but too often the book becomes laden with jargon: "Moreover, the itinerary and the frame of the group tour foster a semiotic mode of looking. Even vernacular landscapes and cultures are constantly scanned for signs of difference from the home world or typicality." Feldman's chatty remarks to his charges lose something in the translation to print, and his lapses into flowery prose will frustrate scholars hoping for evidence-based insights. Feldman's personal journey is unique and many of his insights are original, but the book's overarching message never rises above the mundane: "As guides engage pilgrims in making places, they engage in remaking themselves."
