Since 1999 thousands of younger American Jews have visited Israel on an all-expense-paid 10-day pilgrimage-tour referred to as Birthright Israel. the main intricate of the state-supported place of birth excursions which are cropping up around the globe, this journey seeks to foster within the American Jewish diaspora a lifelong feel of attachment to Israel according to ethnic and political harmony. Over a half-billion funds (and counting) has been spent cultivating this attachment, and regardless of Sept. 11 and the continuing Israeli-Palestinian clash the excursions are nonetheless going strong.

Based on over seven years of first-hand commentary in modern-day Israel, Shaul Kelner presents an on-the-ground examine this hotly debated and extensively emulated use of tourism to forge transnational ties. We trip the bus, attend speeches with the best Minister, hand around in the resort bar, and get a clean believe for younger American Jewish identification and modern Israel. We see how tourism's dynamism coupled with the colourful human supplier of the person travelers unavoidably complicate travel leaders' efforts to rein tourism in and convey it below regulate. by way of the wider which means of tourism, Kelner brings to gentle the contradictions inherent within the excursions and the ways in which humans understandtheir dating to put either materially and symbolically. wealthy intimately, engagingly written, and delicate to the complexities of contemporary trip and sleek diaspora Jewishness, Tours that Bind bargains a brand new mind set approximately tourism as a manner in which humans advance understandings of position, society, and self.