Jewish Guide in the Holy Land

Jackie Feldman is 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.

• 1. How Guiding Christians Made Me Israeli2. Guided Holy Land Pilgrimage—Sharing the Road3. Opening Their Eyes: Performance of a Shared Protestant-Israeli Bible Land4. Christianizing the Conflict: Bethlehem and the Separation Wall5. The Goods of Pilgrimage: Tips, Souvenirs, and the Moralities of Exchange6. The Seductions of Guiding Christians7. Conclusions: Pilgrimage, Performance, and the Suspension of Disbelief

Feldman successfully shows how deeply the political and religious dimensions are intertwined and enacted when guides and pilgrims navigate a sacred landscape marked with politically potent barriers. This kind of material makes A Jewish Guide in the Holy Land a wonderful case study to use in teaching about pilgrimage and tourism in a space marked by multiple narratives of competing nationalisms.(American Ethnologist) The book is recommended for anyone who has ever visited the Holy Land or worked with groups in it.(Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations) A comprehensive tour of the implications, challenges and irritations of Christian tourists guided by US-born or Sabra Jewish Israelis sharing a common, often violent history but from unequal power positions – a journey to the mutual other. In a wonderful playful way - in the most serious sense of the word – he describes his own and other guides' paradigmatic experiences as holders of the keys" to  Christian pilgrims' experience of the Holy Land. All take part in a journey exploring theology, religion, politics and human nature in an enormously complex field of encounter. An intense and sometimes breathtaking, sometimes very funny, learning experience for every reader - Jewish and Christian, religious and nonreligious, pilgrim or skeptic.- Professor Christian Staffa (Evangelische Akademie zu Berlin) Here, the author chronicles his experiences shepherding tourists, mostly Protestants, on pilgrimages to the Holy Land. . . . A unique lens through which to view the conflicted Promised Land.(Kirkus Reviews) One of the personal points that he makes  is that guiding Christian pilgrims and tourists contributed towards his development of his Israeli identity. It is interesting that working myself in this specialized industry also made me more aware of my Palestinian identity and in thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it is the "Land" that we both share. Quite a bit of the Old and New Testament writing; often enough, is expressed metaphorically. In other words, what was written was not always what was meant. The Old Testament writers and Christ himself expressed themselves in parables, allegories, and proverbs, drawing images from the land and its culture. To me it is clear that this shared land that gave rise to two national narratives, can and must incorporate these narratives. It is truly a one Land with two Nations and three Monotheistic Religions.- Hani Abu Dayyeh (Near East Tours, President)