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Winner, 2010 Association for Jewish Studies Jordan Schnitzer Book
Award 2011 Honorable Mention for the American Sociological
Association Culture Section's 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 tourism's
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.
Religion in Philanthropic Organizations explores the tensions
inherent in religious philanthropies across a variety of
organizations and examines the effect assumptions about
"professional, scientific, nonsectarian" philanthropy have had on
how religious philanthropies carry out their activities. The
organizations examined include the American Friends Service
Committee, the American Soviet Jewry Movement, Catholic Charities
USA, the Salvation Army, the World Council of Churches, and World
Vision (in global comparative context). The book also looks at
Robert Pierce, founder of World Vision and Samaritan's Purse, and
at matters not bounded by a single religious philanthropy:
philanthropy and Jewish identity, American Muslim philanthropy
since 9/11, and the complexities of the federal program that funds
faith-based initiatives. These essays shed light on how religion
and philanthropy function in American society, shaping and being
shaped by the culture and its notions of the "common good."
Winner, 2010 Association for Jewish Studies Jordan Schnitzer Book
Award 2011 Honorable Mention for the American Sociological
Association Culture Section's 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 tourism's
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.
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