Encountering Religious Others: Jewish-Christian Relations in Contemporary Guided Pilgrimages to the Holy Land

Abstract

Christian pilgrims come to the Holy Land to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and the Bible and confirm their faith. Yet through their encounters with Jewish-Israeli tour guides, they encounter Judaism as an Other, rather than as merely the Old Testament preparation for the coming of Christ. Jewish guides, in turn, often find themselves drawn into interreligious dialogue as a consequence of pilgrims' expectations that they represent Judaism and Israel. Drawing on three decades of personal experience as tour guide and interviews with other guides and tour leaders, I present several vignettes that illustrate the possibilities offered in these encounters. I argue that the setting in the Holy Land/Israel tour encourages greater intimacy and offers more equal power conditions for the Jewish-Christian encounter than in formal interfaith dialogues. Furthermore, by frequently presenting their Judaism in terms comprehensible and acceptable to Christians, guides are led to engage in 'spiritual labour' to maintain boundaries between their on-tour performances and their Jewish beliefs and practice outside of the tour frame.