Dr. Jackie Feldman (Ben Gurion University of the Negev)

ZIRS
Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Regionalstudien
Reichardtstraße 6
06114 Halle/Saale

Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land are often guided by Jewish-Israeli tour guides. In visiting charged spaces of storied sites, and within the environmental bubble of the guided tour, deep-rooted Christian understandings of Judaism and Jewish understandings of Christianity surface and interact, sometimes in surprising ways. While guides specialize in telling seductive stories of the sites, they are often caught up in their own performances in ways that affect them outside the frame of the tour. Through interviews with guides, observations of group tours and my own experience as a tour guide, I trace how guiding performances for Christians both reflect and shape guides’ Jewish identities. I also document the rituals and rhetorics they practice to protect themselves against the consequences of religious seduction. The analysis should demonstrate the utility, as well as the limitations, of the dramaturgical frame for the analysis of pilgrimage.