Shaul Kelner's Books

Tours That Bind

Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israeli Birthright Tourism

By: Shaul Kelner

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Tours That Bind

Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israeli Birthright Tourism

By: Shaul Kelner

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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288

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NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0814748171

ISBN 13

9780814748176

Tours That Bind

Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israeli Birthright Tourism

By: Shaul Kelner

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Tours That Bind

Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israeli Birthright Tourism

By: Shaul Kelner

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288

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NYU Press

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ISBN 10

0814748171

ISBN 13

9780814748176

A Cold War Exodus

How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews

By: Shaul Kelner

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A Cold War Exodus

How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews

By: Shaul Kelner

Reveals the mass mobilization tactics that helped free Soviet Jews and reshaped the Jewish American experience from the Johnson era through the Reagan–Bush years What do these things have in common? Ingrid Bergman, Passover matzoh, Banana Republic®, the fitness craze, the Philadelphia Flyers, B-grade spy movies, and ten thousand Bar and Bat Mitzvah sermons? Nothing, except that social movement activists enlisted them all into the most effective human rights campaign of the Cold War. The plight of Jews in the USSR was marked by systemic antisemitism, a problem largely ignored by Western policymakers trying to improve relations with the Soviets. In the face of governmental apathy, activists in the United States hatched a bold plan: unite Jewish Americans to demand that Washington exert pressure on Moscow for change. A Cold War Exodus delves into the gripping narrative of how these men and women, through ingenuity and determination, devised mass mobilization tactics during a three-decade-long campaign to liberate Soviet Jews—an endeavor that would ultimately lead to one of the most significant mass emigrations in Jewish history. Drawing from a wealth of archival sources including the travelogues of thousands of American tourists who smuggled aid to Russian Jews, Shaul Kelner offers a compelling tale of activism and its profound impact, revealing how a seemingly disparate array of elements could be woven together to forge a movement and achieve the seemingly impossible. It is a testament to the power of unity, creativity, and the unwavering dedication of those who believe in the cause of human rights.

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Page Count

393

Publisher

NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1479859109

ISBN 13

9781479859108

Meir Kahane

The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical

By: Shaul Magid

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Meir Kahane

The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical

By: Shaul Magid

The life and politics of an American Jewish activist who preached radical and violent means to Jewish survival Meir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968, declaring that Jews must protect themselves by any means necessary. He immigrated to Israel in 1971, where he founded KACH, an ultranationalist and racist political party. He would die by assassination in 1990. Shaul Magid provides an in-depth look at this controversial figure, showing how the postwar American experience shaped his life and political thought. Magid sheds new light on Kahane’s radical political views, his critique of liberalism, and his use of the “grammar of race” as a tool to promote Jewish pride. He discusses Kahane’s theory of violence as a mechanism to assure Jewish safety, and traces how his Zionism evolved from a fervent support of Israel to a belief that the Zionist project had failed. Magid examines how tradition and classical Jewish texts profoundly influenced Kahane’s thought later in life, and argues that Kahane’s enduring legacy lies not in his Israeli career but in the challenge he posed to the liberalism and assimilatory project of the postwar American Jewish establishment. This incisive book shows how Kahane was a quintessentially American figure, one who adopted the radicalism of the militant Left as a tenet of Jewish survival.

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296

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691254699

ISBN 13

9780691254692

Families, Rabbis and Education

Traditional Jewish Society in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe

By: Shaul Stampfer

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Families, Rabbis and Education

Traditional Jewish Society in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe

By: Shaul Stampfer

Viewing the Jewish history of eastern Europe through the prism of the lives of ordinary people produces findings that are sometimes surprising but always stimulating.

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Page Count

429

Publisher

Liverpool University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1909821144

ISBN 13

9781909821149

A Cold War Exodus

How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews

By: Shaul Kelner

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A Cold War Exodus

How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews

By: Shaul Kelner

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456

Publisher

NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1479879398

ISBN 13

9781479879397

Israel in the American Mind

The Cultural Politics of US-Israeli Relations, 1958–1988

By: Shaul Mitelpunkt

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Israel in the American Mind

The Cultural Politics of US-Israeli Relations, 1958–1988

By: Shaul Mitelpunkt

This book examines the changing meanings Americans and Israelis invested in the relationship between their countries from the late 1950s to the 1980s. Bringing to light previously unexamined sources, this study is the first to investigate the intricate mechanisms that defined and redefined Israel's place in American imagination through the war-strewn 1960s and 1970s. Departing from traditional diplomatic histories that focus on the political elites alone, Shaul Mitelpunkt places the relationship deep in the cultural, social, intellectual, and ideological landscapes of both societies. Examining Israeli propaganda operations in America, Mitelpunkt also pays close attention to the way Israelis manipulated and responded to American perceptions of their country, and reveals the reservations some expressed towards their country's relationship with the United States. By contextualizing the relationship within the changing domestic concerns in both countries, this book provides a truly transnational history of US-Israeli relations.

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Page Count

407

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

110839518X

ISBN 13

9781108395182

Piety and Rebellion

Essays in Hasidism

By: Shaul Magid

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Piety and Rebellion

Essays in Hasidism

By: Shaul Magid

Piety and Rebellion examines the span of the Hasidic textual tradition from its earliest phases to the 20th century. The essays collected in this volume focus on the tension between Hasidic fidelity to tradition and its rebellious attempt to push the devotional life beyond the borders of conventional religious practice. Many of the essays exhibit a comparative perspective deployed to better articulate the innovative spirit, and traditional challenges, Hasidism presents to the traditional Jewish world. Piety and Rebellion is an attempt to present Hasidism as one case whereby maximalist religion can yield a rebellious challenge to conventional conceptions of religious thought and practice.

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289

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Academic Studies PRess

Published Date

ISBN 10

1644690918

ISBN 13

9781644690918

American Post-Judaism

Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society

By: Shaul Magid

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American Post-Judaism

Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society

By: Shaul Magid

How do American Jews identify as both Jewish and American? American Post-Judaism argues that Zionism and the Holocaust, two anchors of contemporary American Jewish identity, will no longer be centers of identity formation for future generations of American Jews. Shaul Magid articulates a new, post-ethnic American Jewishness. He discusses pragmatism and spirituality, monotheism and post-monotheism, Jesus, Jewish law, sainthood and self-realization, and the meaning of the Holocaust for those who have never known survivors. Magid presents Jewish Renewal as a movement that takes this radical cultural transition seriously in its strivings for a new era in Jewish thought and practice.

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Page Count

769

Publisher

Indiana University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0253008093

ISBN 13

9780253008091

Book's by Shaul Kelner

Tours That Bind

Tours That Bind

Tours That Bind

Tours That Bind

A Cold War Exodus

A Cold War Exodus

Meir Kahane

Meir Kahane

Families, Rabbis and Education

Families, Rabbis and Education

A Cold War Exodus

A Cold War Exodus

Israel in the American Mind

Israel in the American Mind

Piety and Rebellion

Piety and Rebellion

American Post-Judaism

American Post-Judaism

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