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.
#888689 in Books Indiana University Press 2012-07-11 2012-07-11Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x 1.00 x 6.00l; 1.25 #File Name: 0253001838384 pages
Review
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Great for showing Russia's multiethnic diversityBy Paul E. RichardsonShould you find yourself so unlucky to be in the company of someone arguing for a "Russia for Russians" or similar nationalistic nonsense; you would do well to have this book in your arsenal. Not for flinging at the fool; of course; but for citation and reasoned argument. As if that gets one very far these days...In any event; as this book makes patently clear in its 31 biographical essays; Russia is a complex; multi-ethnic state founded; shaped and expanded by rulers; leaders; thinkers and artists who came from a wide variety of nations; confessions and traditions. Yes; we all know about Catherine the Great (German) and Stalin (Georgian); but there have been a broad variety of souls; from Lomonosov; Gogol and Borodin; to Bagration; Shamil and Mannerheim; who have influenced all aspects of Russian culture; science and politics by injecting influences from other cultures and traditions.The objective of this collection is to use the personal; microhistoric approach allowed by biography to "open up a view on the long-running effects of what it meant to live in a densely multicultural neighborhood." That the volume begins with biographies of Ermak Timofeyevich - the Cossack who opened up Siberia; and Simeon Bekbulatovich - the Tatar prince that Ivan IV installed on the Kremlin throne for a year; and ends with the writer Boris Akunin and the Kremlin puppeteer Vladislav Surkov; gives a sense of the breadth of its coverage.It would be silly to expect that the fullness of Russian cultural diversity could be expressed in a single 350-page book; and the editors well admit they have no such pretensions. But it is an invaluable start down the road to grasping the often sadly overlooked diversity that Russians will joke about ("scratch a Russian and you find a Tatar") but rarely embrace (contrast the continued discrimination against Tatars with the reality that Tatar princes and descendants of the Mongols were instrumental in the expansion of the Russian empire under Ivan IV).Each biography here opens a door onto unknown pages of history. Yes; there are biographies of the sort of better-known luminaries enumerated above. But the strength of this book is how these are balanced by biographies of unknown souls who had great influence or whose lives signified the times they lived in; from a fake Circassian princess; to a Central Asian poet; to an itinerant pretender to the Russian throne.As reviewed in Russian Life magazine.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy CLIFFORD R. SCOTTExcellent historical book!!!
