israel

Veneration and Critique: Israel, the Sociology of American Judaism and the Problematics of Sovereignty

2016. In Jewish Studies Quarterly 23, 194–221. Both the erosion of state sovereignty and the conceptual reassessments that have emerged in response to this erosion provide the context for this consideration of American Jewish religious engagement with the State of Israel. Theorizations of sovereignty can be helpful for thinking about the relationship between American Judaism…

Posted by kelnersj on October 18, 2018 in Articles, Research, articles, diaspora, israel, religion

Historical Perspectives on Diaspora Homeland Tourism: ‘Israel Experience’ Education in the 1950s and 1960s

2013. In Diaspora, Indigenous and Minority Education 7(2): 99–113. Homeland tourism is a powerful medium of diasporic education. Yet efforts to understand the enterprise are hampered by neglect of the field’s history. This article contributes to the historiography of diaspora homeland tourism by examining the emergence American Jewish educational tours of Israel in the 1950s and…

Posted by kelnersj on April 23, 2014 in Articles, Research, articles, Birthright Israel, diaspora, education, israel, pedagogy, tourism

Constructing Jewish Belonging through Mass Tourism: Self-Narration in Israel Experience Programs

2011. An exploration of how identity narratives are constructed on Birthright Israel. Shaul Kelner. 2011. “Constructing Jewish Belonging through Mass Tourism: Self-Narration in Israel Experience Programs.” Chapter 9 in Harvey E. Goldberg, Steven M. Cohen and Ezra Kopelowitz, eds. Dynamic Belonging: Contemporary Jewish Collective Identities. New York: Berghahn Books. Pp. 171-187.

Posted by kelnersj on December 10, 2011 in Articles, Chapters, Research, Birthright Israel, chapters, israel, tourism

Tours That Bind — A Study of Birthright Israel

Tours That Bind Diaspora, Pilgrimage &Israeli Birthright Tourism Shaul Kelner AmazonNYU Press New York University Press, 2010 ★ Jordan Schnitzer Book Award, Association for Jewish Studies ★ Honorable Mention, Mary Douglas Prize, ASA Culture Section A new way of thinking about tourism as a way through which people develop understandings of place, society, and self….

Posted by fullerra on October 11, 2011 in , Birthright Israel, book, diaspora, featured, foundations, israel, tourism

From Shrine to Forum: Masada and the Politics of Jewish Extremism

2008. Israel Studies 13(2): 146-63. With Theodore Sasson. Zionist collective memory has long associated Masada with the struggle to secure Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel. This article examines the effects of the political upheavals of the Oslo and post-Oslo periods on the meanings ascribed to Masada. It documents the popularity of a critical…

Posted by kelnersj on September 21, 2011 in Articles, Research, articles, collective memory, israel, tourism

The Impact of Israel Experience Programs on Israel’s Symbolic Meaning

2003-4. Contemporary Jewry 24: 124-154. Ethnographic study of Israel experience programs reveals processes by which Israel becomes cognitively and affectively meaningful to American Jews. A Durkheimian analysis suggests that feelings generated by an intense group experience are preserved in symbolic residue that re-evokes these feelings. For American Jewish travelers, Israel comes to serve as a…

Posted by kelnersj on September 20, 2011 in Articles, Research, articles, Birthright Israel, israel, tourism

Summary

Purchase | Contents | Press | Op-Eds | Summary Since 1999 hundreds of thousands of young American Jews have visited Israel on an all-expense-paid 10-day pilgrimage-tour known as Birthright Israel. The most elaborate of the state-supported homeland tours that are cropping up all over the world, this tour seeks to foster in the American Jewish…

Posted by fullerra on August 3, 2011 in , Birthright Israel, book, diaspora, israel, tourism

Press

Forward Core Connection By Harriet Hartman July 14, 2010 How Birthright Israel works. Tablet Magazine Breeding Zionism by Adam Kirsch June 15, 2010 Is the Birthright Israel tour designed to foster a love of Israel or is it simply a chance to hook up? The Jerusalem Post A Guided Tour of Birthright by Abigail Klein…

Posted by fullerra on August 3, 2011 in , Birthright Israel, book, diaspora, israel, news, reviews, tourism

CHAPTERS 1 DEPLOYING TOURISM How did a leisure activity like tourism come to figure as a political strategy for building bridges between nation states and transnational diasporas? This chapter introduces the case of Taglit / Birthright Israel, a heritage tour program for diaspora Jews, situating it in the context of the broader field of diaspora…