{"product_id":"tours-that-bind-diaspora-pilgrimage-and-israeli-birthright-tourism-9780814748176","title":"Tours That Bind: Diaspora  Pilgrimage  and Israeli Birthright Tourism","description":"\u003cp\u003eWinner  2010 Association for Jewish Studies Jordan Schnitzer Book Award  2011 Honorable Mention for the American Sociological Association Culture Sections Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book  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 diaspora a lifelong sense of attachment to Israel based on ethnic and political solidarity. Over a half-billion dollars (and counting) has been spent cultivating this attachment  and despite 9\/11 and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict the tours are still going strong. Based on over seven years of first-hand observation in modern day Israel  Shaul Kelner provides an on-the-ground look at this hotly debated and widely emulated use of tourism to forge transnational ties. We ride the bus  attend speeches with the Prime Minister  hang out in the hotel bar  and get a fresh feel for young American Jewish identity and contemporary Israel. We see how tourisms dynamism coupled with the vibrant human agency of the individual tourists inevitably complicate tour leaders efforts to rein tourism in and bring it under control. By looking at the broader meaning of tourism  Kelner brings to light the contradictions inherent in the tours and the ways that people understandtheir relationship to place both materially and symbolically. Rich in detail  engagingly written  and sensitive to the complexities of modern travel and modern diaspora Jewishness  Tours that Bind offers a new way of thinking about tourism as a way through which people develop understandings of place  society  and self.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45651704873013,"sku":"ByrdShop_0814748171","price":38.9,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780814748176.jpg?v=1781837634","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/tours-that-bind-diaspora-pilgrimage-and-israeli-birthright-tourism-9780814748176","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}