A Jeish Guide in the Holy Land Ho Christian Pilgrims Made Me Israeli [Hardcover]

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 Feldmanborn into an Orthodox Jewish family in New York, now an Israeli citizen, scholar, and licensed guidehas 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.

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.The book is recommended for anyone who has ever visited the Holy Land or worked with groups in it.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, llƒB