Bulletin: Americans Jews and Israel

Books

• Lawrence J. Epstein, Americans and the Birth of Israel

Articles

• Yehonatan Abramson, Making a Homeland, Constructing a Diaspora: The Case of Taglit-Birthright Israel
• Mordechai Inbari, Jewish and Israeli Pilgrimage Experience: Constructing National Identity
• Shaul Kelner, Israel, the Sociology of American Judaism and the Problematics of Sovereignty
• Stephen W. Litvin and Jill Alison Schancupp, American Jewish Youth’s Attachment to Israel: Implications for Israeli Tourism

Reviews

• Zev Eleff, on Emily Alice Katz’s Bringing Zion Home
• Ari Y. Kelman, on Dov Waxman’s Trouble in the Tribe
• Eli Lederhendler, on Jonathan Rynhold’s The Arab Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture, Theodore Sasson’s The New American Zionism, and Dov Waxman’s Trouble in the Tribe
• Michael Rubner, on Dov Waxman’s Trouble in the Tribe
• Sarah M. Tauber, on Emily Alice Katz’s Bringing Zion Home

New Article: Sasson et al, Does Taglit-Birthright Israel Foster Long-Distance Nationalism?

Sasson, Theodore, Michelle Shain, Shahar Hecht, Graham Wright, and Leonard Saxe. “Does Taglit-Birthright Israel Foster Long-Distance Nationalism?” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 20.4 (2014): 438-54.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537113.2014.969149

 

Abstract

Taglit-Birthright Israel has brought hundreds of thousands of diaspora Jewish young adults on tours of Israel. Drawing on data from a large-scale program evaluation, we ask how the program affects participants’ feelings of homeland attachment and political views on contentious homeland issues. North Americans who traveled to Israel with Taglit between 2010 and 2012 were surveyed together with a comparison group of applicants to the program who did not participate. In multivariate analysis, Taglit sharply increases feelings of connection to Israel but has no effect on attitudes concerning the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The program modestly increases scores on a “favorability” scale and modestly increases opposition to a possible division of Jerusalem in a future peace deal. In contrast to Benedict Anderson’s theory of long-distance nationalism, the findings suggest that feelings of homeland connection can be fostered without triggering ethnonationalist attitudes associated with the political right.

New Article: Avni, Homeland Tour Guide Narratives and the Discursive Construction of the Diasporic

Avni, Sharon. “Homeland Tour Guide Narratives and the Discursive Construction of the Diasporic.” Narrative Inquiry 23.2 (2013): 227-44.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/nari/2013/00000023/00000002/art00001

 

Abstract

By analyzing the constitutive role of tour guides narratives, this article addresses the recruitment of tourism as a means of forging transnational ties between diasporans and their ethnic homeland. Combining theoretical frameworks from linguistic anthropology and the sociology of tourism, it examines the narratives told to American Jewish youth at three graves at a military cemetery in Israel and analyzes the discursive, linguistic, and rhetorical strategies in the narratives, including stancetaking, reported speech, and pronominal usage. Attending to the growing phenomenon of diaspora homeland tourism, it analyzes how tour guide narratives about the past work as a form of social action in constituting present day transnational identifications.