New Book: Feldman, A Jewish Guide in the Holy Land

Feldman, Jackie. A Jewish Guide in the Holy Land. How Christian Pilgrims Made Me Israeli. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016.

 

 

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.

 

Table of Contents

• 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

 

JACKIE FELDMAN 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.

 

 

 

Reminder: How Jewish is the Jewish State? Conference at American University, Oct 28, 2014

See more here: https://israbib.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/conference-program-how-jewish-is-the-jewish-state-religion-and-society-in-israel-american-university-oct-28-2014/

“How Jewish Is the Jewish State?  Religion and Society in Israel” – Academic Conference at American University 

Tuesday, October 28, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Free with RSVP: http://www.american.edu/cas/israelstudies/rsvp  

This all day conference examines the separation of state and religion in Israel, looks into the treatment and the internal structure of non-Jews in the Jewish state, and asks about Jewish religious pluralism and Orthodox dominance. Leading experts from Israel, Europe, and the United States will speak on these questions, drawing upon their own scholarship, teaching, and variant experiences at several different institutions.   A complete conference program is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lc_F_g00uhs58ZayyBfJudXkF2rhiWUVoLuanaIa7Mg/edit?usp=sharing  Location: SIS Building Abramson Family Founders Room. Pre-paid parking is available in the School for International Service garage and Katzen Arts Center garage (campus map here).

“Israel at the Crossroads of Democracy, Nationalism and Religion”- Free lecture at American University

Tuesday, October 28, 7:30 PM 

Free with RSVP: http://www.american.edu/cas/israelstudies/rsvp  

Lecture by Moshe Halbertal, Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Hebrew University, and a faculty member at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem, Israel.  Location: Mary Graydon Center (MGC) Rooms 4-5.  Free parking is available in the Katzen Arts Center garage and the Sports Center garage (campus map here).

Conference Program: How Jewish is the Jewish State? Religion and Society in Israel, American University, Oct 28, 2014

“How Jewish is the Jewish State? Religion and Society in Israel”

October 28, 2014

American University, Washington, DC

Scholars are invited to attend “How Jewish is the Jewish State? Religion and Society in Israel,” a day-long academic conference on October 28, 2014 at American University in Washington, DC.  The conference is sponsored by American University’s Center for Israel Studies and Jewish Studies Program.  A limited number of travel subsidies are available for junior faculty and advanced graduate students.  Applications for travel subsidies are due September 15, 2014.  Notification will be made by October 1, 2014.

This conference examines the separation of state and religion in Israel, looks into the treatment and the internal structure of non-Jews in the Jewish state, and asks about Jewish religious pluralism and Orthodox dominance. Leading experts from Israel, Europe, and the United States will speak on these questions, drawing upon their own scholarship, teaching, and variant experiences at several different institutions.

Conference Chairs:
Michael Brenner, Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, American University and Chair of Jewish History and Culture, Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich
Pamela Nadell, Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies, American University

Location: The conference will take place at American University in the School of International Service Abramson Family Founder’s Room.  The address of the university is 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC.

Preliminary Program:

8:00-9:00 AM        Registration, Networking, and Coffee/Continental Breakfast

9:00-10:30 AM      Separation between State and Religion
Yedidia Stern ( Bar Ilan University/Israel Democracy Institute)  New Frontiers in the Struggle Between Religion and State
Eli Salzberger (Haifa University): Religion and State: Law in the Books versus Law in Action
Kimmy Caplan (Bar Ilan University): Orthodox Monopolies: A Trojan Horse?
Chair: Pamela Nadell, Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies, American University (AU)

10:30 AM        Coffee Break

11:00-1:00 PM     Non-Jews in the Jewish State
Ahmad Natour (Hebrew University, Jerusalem): Islam and Muslims in the State of the Jews
Amal el-Sana Alh’jooj (McGill University, Montreal): Between Sharia Law, Israeli Law and Traditions: The Case of Bedouin Women in Israel
Ya’akov Ariel (University of North Carolina): Evangelical Christians in Israel
Nurit Novis Deutsch (Hebrew University, Jerusalem): Attitudes among Religious Jews in Israel Towards Non-Jews
Moderator: Calvin Goldscheider, Scholar in Residence (AU)

1:00-2:30 PM     Lunch

2:30-4:30 PM         Jewish Pluralism
Michael A. Meyer (Hebrew Union College Cincinnati): Progressive Judaism, Israeli Style
Fania Oz-Salzberger (Haifa University): Secular Israel: Where from and where to?
Sara Hirschhorn (Oxford University): Religion among American Settlers
Gershon Greenberg (AU): Haredi Attitudes Towards Israeli Statehood
Chair: Michael Brenner, Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, American University and Chair of Jewish History and Culture, Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich

4:30-5:30 PM        Reception

7:30 PM    Keynote: “Israel at the Crossroads of Democracy, Nationalism and Religion” Moshe Halbertal (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)

This conference is generously supported by the Knapp Family Foundation.

 

A limited number of travel subsidies are available for junior faculty and advanced graduate students to attend the conference. Click here for details.

Cite: Chevrette and Braverman, Brothers, Fathers, Terrorists: Masculine Assemblages in Glenn Beck’s Rhetoric of US-Israel Unity

Chevrette, Roberta and Lisa C. Braverman. “Brothers, Fathers, Terrorists: Masculine Assemblages in Glenn Beck’s Rhetoric of US-Israel Unity Post-9/11.” Feminist Formations 25.2 (2013): 81-106.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/feminist_formations/v025/25.2.chevrette.html

 

Abstract

Through rhetorical analysis of Glenn Beck’s keynote at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) Summit in Washington, D.C., and his subsequent “Restoring Courage” rally in Israel, this article examines the construction of a gendered and militarized “state of emergency” in which Israel and the United States stand together as brothers against their enemies in the modern era. In this discursive and political formation, Israel is constructed as a site of perpetual persecution, while anxieties about US global dominance are (mis)placed within its borders. This constructed emergency generalizes the nuances of Palestinian and Israeli experiences, while homogenizing Palestinians into a gendered and racialized terrorist Other. Offering a theorization of masculine assemblages, the authors analyze how, in the post-9/11 security state, the unification of US-Israeli interests is articulated through multiple interlocking discourses of masculinity. Through careful deconstruction of the masculine assemblages that bind together this epistemological and geo-political formation, this analysis contributes to postcolonial and transnational feminist theorizing by exploring how men embody and construct the nation-state, how discourses of race, religion, and nation assemble together through the concept of masculinity, and how these assemblages provoke states of emergency and impetuses for action.