Between Authenticity and Ethnicity: Heritage Tourism and Re-ethnification Among Diaspora Jewish Youth

Lilach Lev Ari Oranim, Academic College of Educ ation and Bar lion University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel David Miffe/berg Oranim Academic College of Educ ation, Mobile Post, Tivon 36006, Israel

Heritage tourism takes on a new meaning when conceived and implemented in the framework of a diaspora- llOmelalld context. Trip organisers utilise heritage tourism that identifies the signifiers of national collective identity or Peoplehood and construct an experience of authenticity that supports a newly reconstructed narrative of personal and colJective identity that bridges the diaspora and homeland identities. This paper examines into the differential consequences of heritage tourism on the ethnic identity of diaspora travellers from North America and the former Soviet Union to their home­ land, specifically contrasting Jewish tourists from different diaspora localities making an otherwise almost identical birthright Israel trip. For both groups, Jewish ethnic identity was strengthened, particularly their emotional attachment to Israel. However, the difference between the two groups was found in the actual factors that explain this post trip attachment to Israel. The experiential component was more prominent among participants from the former Soviet Union, while among North American student par­ ticipants, Jewish background as wen as their higher pre-trip motivations provide an explanation for their high post-trip scores of attachment to Israel. Israel thus serves as the liminal domain of diaspora tourists, where existential authenticity and pre-trip ethnicity as latent as the latter may be, intertwine experientially to generate an expan­ sion of the frame of individual identity of diaspora tourists in their homeland. doi: 1O. 21 67/jht027.0

Keywords: authenticity, diaspora, ethnic identity, heritage tourism, homeland, PeopJehood

Introduction The Israel visit, as a form of heritage tourism, has recently moved to a high-priority position on the American Jewish communal agenda. The 1990 National Jewish Population Survey on changes in Jewish identification and Jewish behaviours noted that Jewish continuity cannot be taken for granted . The most often-ci ted data concern the rising rate of intermarriage and concomi­ tant loss of commitment to raising Jewish children. Other findings, of no less

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79 80 Journal of Heritage Tourism significance, include most notably lower rates of observance of most traditional Jewish religious practices, less exclusively Jewish friendship patterns, and a large drop in emotional attachment to the State of Israel. Thus, 'strengthening Jewish identity' has become a newly explicit goal of Jewish communal leader­ ship, and the search for ways to accomplish this end has been a preoccupation of the organised Jewish community (Israel & Mittelberg, 1998). Ethnicity has been understood as an outcome of macro and micro social forces under the condition of modernity (Giddens, 1991). Globalisation of contemporary life has been observed as having the twin consequences of the homogenisation of different cultures into one, and the relativisation of all cultures, due to inten­ sive contact between them (Featherstone, 1995). Hence, the contemporary world becomes one in which ethnicity is not disappearing, rather one where modern people typically live through personal multiple identities in a pluralised world. In this world, identity is privatised - an outcome of personal choice. Indeed, the preservation of this personal choice has itself become the metavalue of late modern society. Thus, in the emerging postmodern North America the content of one's ethnicity is irrelevant and most important is the fact that one can choose which ethnicity to assume, as well as the timing, intensity and salience at any given time throughout the life cycle. Hence, the contemporary world becomes one in which ethnicity is not disappearing, rather one where postmoderns typically live through personal multiple identities in a pluralised world (Mittelberg, 1999). Previous research has demonstrated the Jewish impact of educational trips to Israel on participants (Chazan, 1997; Cohen, 2006; Horowitz, 1993; Mittelberg, 1992, 1999). In the most extensive survey of this literature available to date, Chazan (1997) reports that youth visits to Israel have positive outcomes for measures of Jewish identity in adulthood, both while interacting with other life cycle experiences and also by virtue of its own independent causal weight. As Chazan (1997) makes clear, important questions still remain to be answered, as very little is known about the degree to which the measured impact on adult behaviour is a function of the Israel visit itself or post-visit environment and programming. Ioannides and Ioannides (2006: 163) described well the global patterns of heritage travel of diaspora Jews, with travel to Israel, the religious homeland, being a major destination for what they term 'nostalgic' pilgrimage tourism. Indeed, they report that of U,e 862,000 visitors to Israel in 2002, 55% were Jews. Regarding the motivation of these tourists, only 22% indicated leisure and sightseeing as a motive, while 44% came to visit family and friends with a mixture of religious, cultural and historical motivation for visiting. The birthright Israel programme was launched in 2000, marking the start of a massive educational experiment among 5000 college students from diaspora Jewish communities in Western countries, primarily North America (NA). In 2002, the programme was expanded to include former Soviet Union (FSU) Jews. The research reported here was based on data collected in this period (2002-2003). The paper begins with a review of key concepts that draw from heritage and diaspora tourism, as well as theories of ethnicity and ethnic identity. Thereafter, Authenticity Ethnicity and Heritage Tourism 81 ethnicity in the NA and FSU group context will be presented. This will be followed by a description and analysis of the structure and content of the birth­ right trip in Israel, followed by analysis of the data regarding the central thesis of this paper concerning the differential weight of pre-trip heritage background in the interaction between traveller and site and its ethnic identity outcomes for the tourists. A unique element of the study is its ability to compare tourists of similar demographic characteristics engaged in an identical itinerary of an Israel expe­ rience programme, yet being differentiated by national and Jewish background. Indeed, several authors (e.g. Pizam & Sussmann, 1995; Pizam & Jeong, 1996; Pizam, 1999) have argued that national cultural characteristics affect tourist behaviour to a greater degree than linguistic or geographic factors. For exam­ ple, differences were found among four groups of tourists (Japanese, Americans, Italian and French) regarding their pre-trip socialisation and their interaction with other tourists. These differences are explained by the researchers as result­ ing from the tourists' cultural background, so that the Japanese are more reserved in interacting with outsiders, while Americans and Italians are raised to be more sociable in new situations. A central argument here is that authenticity is both subjective and dialecti­ cally generated differentially depending on the background of the tourist. Given that so much of the perception and interpretation of authenticity is based on the symbolic dimension of the tourist gaze, it follows that the symbolic lens of the gazer is critical to the subjective construction of authenticity. While heritage tourism is drawn upon in the discussion of authenticity, diaspora tourism will serve as a theoretical framework within which the differential backgrounds of our respondents, here being the diasporas of origin, will be analysed, particu­ larly the role of the 'homeland' as a liminal domain for young diasporic tourists (Collins-Kreiner & Olsen, 2004). Authenticity in Heritage Tourism Global tourism has yielded a large variety of tourism forms. One of them, her­ itage tourism, has often been simply regarded as visitors to places of historical or cultural importance. Like Poria et a/. (2003) argue, it is argued here that heritage tourism experiences are defined by the background and motives of the tourists and not inherent in the sites themselves. It is not the attraction or artifact per se that has heritage value; rather it is the way it is presented together with the motives and backgrounds of the visitors that create the experiential value. Prentice (2001), in discussing museum-based heritage tourism, argues that 'experiential cultural tourism is about the search for allthentic experience. It is co produced between tourism providers and consumers' (Prentice, 2001: 22, our emphasis). Prentice offers a useful list of ways that authenticity is evoked, including direct experience, location, associations with famous people and events, and national origins. These are certainly found in the current study, but the mechanism of the evocation, or its invocation, remains to be explicated. Palmer (1999: 318-319) points to the fact that heritage tourism in England has an important role, affording domestic and foreign tourists 'an opportunity to reaffirm a sense of belonging'. Indeed it serves to signify 'the nation as a 82 Journal of Heritage Tourism community with common beliefs, an historic homeland and as a COmmon culture'. Thus heritage tourism often plays a role of generating and recognising alternative authentic modes of collective identity. Indeed this study shows that heritage tourism provides a basis for the construction of a collective identity where it otherwise might not have been, namely across the homeland-diaspora divide. For Poria el al. (2003) and others (Crang, 1996; Morris, 1998), the subjectivist interpretation leads to the view that tourists may suffer from in-authenticity. While tourists on a heritage tour may well engage in an authentic experience, the question still remains as to what it is that they experienced if not the place. In the perspective offered here, authenticity does not mean the dissolu­ tion of strangeness into familiarity in the Schutzian sense of total homogeneous internalisation of the world view of the indigenous residents (Mittelberg, 1988; Schutz, 1972), for this would mean that one does not just experience authenti­ cally the other, but rather must become the other! As Poria el al. (2003: 240, our emphasis) note, citing Crang (1996: 416), 'tourists can only experience the "markers" of experience and not the experience itself', which reduces by defini­ tion the possibility of authenticity because tourists can never become the artifacts visited or the hosts encountered. If so, what value is there in this measure of authenticity for tourist research at all? Wang (1999) offers an important discussion on the nature and role of authen­ ticity in tourism. After surveying the literature and debate surrounding the differences between objectivist authenticity, which derives from the authentic­ ity of originals, and constructed authenticity, which derives from the projection of symbolic meaning onto the toured Objects, Wang (1999: 352) suggests a third type of authenticity - existential authenticity - which consists of 'an existential state of being that is to be activated by tourist activities' (our emphasis). This state of being refers to tourists' pursuits of their true selves. For Wang, the loss of self is identified as part of the modern condition, but in this paper it may be further viewed in part at least, as a consequence of the ambivalent condition of a minority ethnic in a diaspora sociely. In this view, the tourist activity may serve as a liminal zone (Cohen, 1988; Turner, 1973), resulting in a continuing renegotiation of the identity of the diasporan while touring his/her homeland. Wang (1999: 361-362) further distinguishes between intra-personal and inter-personal existential authenticity. The intra-personal, which refers to bodily feelings, is reserved for the making of self in the transcendence of the routine, perhaps on a beach or through adventure. The inter-personal refers to theiquest for an 'emotional community' - 'tourists are not merely searching for the authenticity of the Other. They also search for the authenticity of, and between, themselves' (Wang, 1999: 364, emphasis original). The communitas of the touristic group serves as a source of authenticity and social construction. The issue here is that authenticity is both subjective and dialectically con­ structed differentially depending on the background of the tourist. This article follows a similar path as Poria el 01. (2003) in locating authenticity in the subjec­ tive interpretation of the tourists themselves, analysing the relationship between motivations and personal attributes with measures of trip satisfaction and recommendations for future visits. The analysis will be expanded to inves­ tigate the impacts of Jewish diaspora heritage tourism on attitudinal change Authenticily Ethnicity and Heritage Tourism 83

amongst the tourists and its differential relationship to background attributes and consequently participants' pre-trip motivations. This study compares two tourist groups engaging in an externally identical form of heritage tourism within similar travel itineraries and implemented by the same tourist provider, yet originating from different heritages, indeed located within different diasporas. On the one hand is the conjunction of heritage with a perception of homeland, while on the other are participants originating from contrasting diasporas. Diaspora and Tourism Coles and Timothy (2004) conceptualised a movement from the primordial and historical definitions of dislocation and relocation (Braziel & Mannur, 2003) to a series of overlapping descriptive and analytical typologies or ideal types of diaspora. Among these is Cohen's (1997) composite ideal typology of diaspora comprising nine elements. These include both dislocation and relocation, the maintenance of collective memory or myth including an ongoing relationship to the homeland and the possibility of return. In addition, diasporic peoples share an alienating relationship with host societies and solidarity with co-ethnics in parallel geographic sites, which Clifford (1997: 246) calls 'multi-local diaspora cultures'. Finally, Cohen (1997) sees the possible outcome of diasporas being a source or catalyst for pluralism and tolerance in the country of destination. In addition, Cohen (1997) offers a fivefold classification of diaspora types, based on common­ alities of experiences of the diasporic peoples; these include victim diasporas, labour diasporas, imperial diasporas, trade diasporas, and cultural diasporas. Shuval (2000), who deals primarily with diasporas as a consequence of migration, presents similar definitional criteria to those of Cohen (1997), but emphasises the need to analyse diasporas with respect to three analytical dimensions: characteristics of the diaspora group itself, those of the home­ land, and those of the host society (Shuval, 2000). This study utilises the defi­ nition of cultural diaspora that attempts to elucidate the issues of collective identity of homeland and nation, recognising that Mitchell's (1997) diasporic identities are multifaceted and composed of complexly interwoven strands of ethnicity, religion and ancestry. Diaspora communities have specific geographies and histories, they have multiple loyalties, they move between regions, do not occupy a single cultural space and, perhaps most importantly, operate exterior to state boundaries and their cultural effects. (cited by Coles & Timothy, 2004: 7) Clearly there is a great deal of conceptual overlap and symbiosis between diaspora and tourism. Most obviously, contemporary heritage tours to the home country serve to reinforce travellers' ethnic identities. HOllingshead (1998) argues that 'travel and tourism have crucial roles to play reflexively in the pro­ cess of learning and self discovery that define tl1e fluid, constantly unfolding nature of diaspora identities' (cited by Coles & Timothy, 2004: 13). Coles and Timothy (2004: 13) offer six distinctive patterns of travel derived from three characteristics of diaspora referred to above: the duality of home and host country, the real and imagined collective memory of the group, and the 84 Journal of Heritage Tourism contrasting and distinctive nature of diasporic identities abroad. The six pat­ terns of diaspora tourism, which are not as distinctive analytically from each other as the authors suggest, include the following: (1) Diaspora tourists seeking roots in the homeland; (2) Genealogical or family history tourism; (3) Homeland tourists visiting the diaspora spaces; (4) Diaspora destinations as tourist sites for mainstream non-diaspora tourists; (5) Homeland and diaspora members travelling to transit spaces, such as concentration camps in Poland; and (6) Travel by diasporic people to vacation spaces in the host state. Diaspora and homeland are the structure on which the everyday and liminal interplay. The existential authenticity referred to above is the goal and differen­ tial outcome of the pluralistic possibilities afforded by the experience. Not only is authenticity not necessarily derived from the toured objects alone, there is not just one possible set of symbols to be projected on the objects, and different tourist groups can generate different types and levels of existential authenticity that are contingent, in part, on the cultural background and gaze with which they encounter the visited society, in this case their homeland. What follows from this analYSis, and is in fact echoed in some of the empirical contributions reported in Coles and Timothy (2004), is that differential travel patterns are in many ways an extension and reflection of differential character­ istics of different socio-economic segments of a given diaspora. This is certainly reflected in comparisons between different diasporas within a multi-local system, for example, the American or Russian Jewish diasporas, that share a common homeland.

The Ethnic Identity of American Jews Globalisation of cultural identity may serve to predispose the ethnification and cultural renewal of American Jews through the medium of travel, by way of individual choice to experience Israel. How may post-moderns accomplish this cultural feat, by using the construct of 'imagined community'? The anthro­ pologist Thomas Eriksen (1993: 99) cites his colleague, Benedict Anderson, as defining the nation as an 'imagined community'. Membership in this commu­ nityis achieved by self-definition rather than by personal acquaintance, altIt0ugh shared by all members of the community is 'the image of their commtjnion' (Eriksen, 1993: 99). -- Modern American identity is characterised by a high degree of individualism and freedom of choice. The nature of American society itself is open, pluralistic, and multicultural. Americans, unlike the citizens of most societies, even other Western societies, exercise a substantial degree of personal freedom in choos­ ing, or developing, a self-identity. Americans negotiate their way through the social and economic marketplaces in search of a mate, home, and community (Mittelberg, 1999). The ethnic identity of American Jews can be better understood within a broader global and American context. American-born Jews have the option of maintaining their inherited ethnicity in the same form, more or less, or of Authenticity Ethnicity and Heritage Tourism 85 adopting a different form, religious or secular, or none of these. Although the freedom to choose is not equally distributed throughout American society, especially when confronted by boundaries of race, it is less impeded by bound­ aries of religion and language, and least of all by national ancestry (Mittelberg, 1999). Developing and defining one's Jewish identity is, to a large extent, the end product of chosen opportunities and experiences. What then is the role of Israel in this emerging ethnic culture of choice? Israel is at least the one place in the modern world where Jewish values are nominally those of the dominant society. This is in contrast to the minority status of Jews throughout the diaspora. Israel, therefore, is a focus (partial or otherwise) of Jewish identification and a locus of Jewish experience, whether physical or virtual, to be lived and experienced by diasporic Jews.

Ethnification Among FSU Jews The ethnicity of Jews from the FSU can be best understood as a minority, 'a group of people distinguished by physical or cultural characteristics subject to different and unequal treatment by the society in which they live and who regard themselves as victims of collective discrimination' (Stone, 1985: 42). Examples of such groups identified by language are the Israeli Arabs or the Hispanics in the United States. In the case of FSU Jews the minority status is legally prescribed by way of passports, and therefore may properly be called a National Minority. Minority groups are the least integrated into the wider soci­ ety and have the least degree of choice in terms of self-identification (Mittelberg & Borchevsky, 2004). Gans (1994: 578) recently supplemented his theory on symbolic ethnicity with the parallel concept of symbolic religiosity, which develops, in his view, primarily among immigrants and their descendants. Symbolic religiosity refers to 'a form of religiosity detached from religious affiliation and observance'. Gans distinguishes between the patterns of acculturation in America for 'religio-ethnic' groups such as the Jews and 'etlmo-religious' groups such as Russian, Greek and other Orthodox Catholics. Jews are a religious group with ethnic secular characteristics, and, like the Jews, Russian, Greek and Orthodox Catholic immigrants brought with them their own 'national' religions consist­ ing of distinct beliefs and practices that remain an enduring aspect of their ethnic and religious identity. The ethnicity of Russian Jews in the FSU shares the characteristics of a national minority but resembles the notion of symbolic etlmicity. This is the special case of Russian Jewry that, on the one hand was 'subject to different and unequal treatment by the society in which they live and who regard them­ selves as victims of collective discrimination' (Stone, 1985: 42), but where on the other hand, in the FSU the content of their ethnicity was substantively weak (Mittelberg & Borchevsky, 2004). Epstein and Kheimets (2001: 42) have argued in a similar vein that the 'self identification of the post-Soviet Jewish intelli­ gentsia is made up of a unique combination of Jewish ... - ethnic and cultural, but not religious -legacy and the heritage of the Grand Russian Culture'. The recent revival of Jewish cultural and communal life within the FSU has coincided with the biggest wave of emigration to Israel, which began in 1989. Most observers argue that this emigration stream resulted from the economic, 86 Journal of Heritage Tourism political and social crises of the FSU. Between 1990 and 1992, the years of mass emigration from the FSU, when almost 400,000 Jews arrived in Israel, Jewish communal organisations were rather weak and did not operate on a large scale. Nevertheless, some results of the activities of these organisations are now apparent. For example, newer inunigrants know more about 'Judaica' than earlier immigrants. All in all, the level of knowledge about Judaica and life in contemporary Israel among new inunigrants is still low, reflecting the poten­ tially important role of heritage tourism to Israel in general and the birthright trip to Israel in particular in educating them about their motherland (Mittelberg & Borchevsky, 2004).

Heritage Tourism and the Israel Experience Collins-Kreiner and Olsen (2004: 287) mapped the market of Jewish diaspora­ oriented tourism, reporting that it reflects a 'mixing of religious, heritage and cultural reasons for traveling within the context of diaspora tourism'. Viewing the meaning of diaspora tourism then as a continuum that extends from leisure tourism at one end to religious tourism at the other, with heritage/ culture at its centre, they located the case of educational tours, citing birthright Israel pro­ grammes as an example of diaspora-driven heritage tourism. Cohen (2003) also analysed the factors that motivate students to take part in overseas study programmes in Israel. He distinguishes between students who come to Israel for religious reasons and those who come for tourism. The first group is more concerned with issues related to Judaism and Jewish identity and less interested in Israel. The second group is more interested in tours, social activities, free time and interacting with Israeli peers and other overseas students. Collins-Kreiner and Olsen (2004) report that 40 out of the 50 websites they analysed were based on heritage tourism, which allowed the authors to develop a tenfold taxonomy of tour types. Among these were 'youth educational tours', which are exemplified by the birthright Israel programme. Collins-Kreiner and Olsen (2004: 286) reported that this programme achieves its goal of Jewish identity building by 'linking educational themes with physical settings'. It is the question of precisely how this programme achieves that goal that is the focus of this article. Cohen (2004: 135) indicated that these programmes provide an opportunity for individual Jewish tourists to experience a primordial sense of Jewisl, com­ munity by experiencing for the first time, a Jewish public space via h~ritage tourism. Similarly, it is argued in the following that the birthright Israel bus group serves as a platform for the generation of tourist communitas and gener­ ates this kind of inter-personal existential authenticity. This can occur in two related contexts. The first is in the internal communitas of the bus group itself. The second may be found within the structured encounters with Israeli peers, in the personalisation of the encounter with the homeland, which, as Wang (1999: 364) puts it, 'is endowed with sacred values and charged with high emo­ tions' and is designed to heighten precisely this sense of authenticity, played out on the relief map of the cliaspora groups yearning for communitas with their homeland and homeland peers. Authenticity Ethnicity and Heritage Tourism 87

Kelner (200la; 2001b) offers an insightful discussion about the theoretical issue of authenticity in tourism and its application in the birthright Israel programme, based on in-depth ethnographic research. Although a comprehensive discussion is beyond the limited space of this paper, if authenticity lies not in the objects (the 'objectivist' view), the alternative may be, as Kelner suggests (following Wang's second type of authenticity), 'the constructivist position (which) transforms authenticity from a property inherent in toured objects to a set of socially con­ structed symbolic meanings communicated by the objects' (Kelner, 200lb: 4, our emphasis). More recently Kelner has written that the programme pursues tl1is goal by generating 'a sense of a core Jewish self, through group tourism's three stages of exh'ication, group process and narration' (Kelner, 2004: 3). The programme accomplishes this by weaving Israeli homeland sites into a Jewish collective narrative that necessarily encompasses that of Jewish diaspora participants. Moreover, the programme projects Jewish and Zionist meanings onto the sites and encourages participants to reconstruct their own Jewish life stories as a chapter in site narratives (Kelner, 2004: 8).

The Study The current research was designed to examine whether the birthright Israel experience in1pacted the participants' Jewish and Israeli identity and to meas­ ure their satisfaction with various components of the programme. To do so, participants received questionnaires on the first day of the programme in Israel (pre-experience) and on the last day (post-experience). The questionnaire included background characteristics, elements ofJewish identity, attachment to Israel, and several questions evaluating the educational values of the pro­ gramme. Most of the variables were measured on a Likert-type scale, which reflects an intensity measure of the attitudes being reported (Nardi, 2003). The questionnaires were administered in each session of the birthright programme between 2002 and 2003 to the entire population of 18 busloads of participants of a single tourism provider. During this period some 12,000 people participated in the programme. The data reported here include 609 cases, 422 from NA and 187 from the FSU. They do not make up a random sample; rather, they represented the entire population of one provider's participants, where the participants themselves were surveyed through pre- and post-questionnaires that were built into a longitudinal and holistic (with respect to touring group) research design. All participants sat on the same buses, 15 from NA and five from the FSU, were often from the same college communities, and experienced the same itineraries and prograrnn1es during their visit. This design offers an opportunity to control pre-programme experiences and measure actual programme impact without relying on retrospective recollections of pre-experience attitudes. It also evaluates a wider range of actual experiential factors that may cause qualitative differences even between relatively good experiences. The birthright Israel trip to Israel was designed to be an educational experi­ ence, to connect college-age diaspora Jews with their heritage, and to strengthen their Jewish identity. The ten-day trips have been run in winter and summer cohorts, timed to coincide witl1 university inter-sessions. 88 Journal of Heritage Tourism

'Birthright's only eligibility requirements were that applicants consider them­ selves to be Jewish, fall between the ages of 18 and 26 and not have participated previously in a similar 'peer educational program' in Israel. Birthright (Taglit in Hebrew) is an umbrella organisation that authorises and coordinates the efforts of approximately 30 university-based, community-based, religious, for-profit, and secular not-for-profit trip providers' (Kelner, 2004: 5). Underlying the itinerary designed for each trip was a carefully planned set of experiences whose goal was to influence participants both intellectually and emotionally (Saxe et al., 2004). Thus, birthright Israel's short-term goal was to provide 'a stimulating encounter with Israel- and by extension with their own identity' (Post, 1999). The core structure of the programme, as experienced by over 5000 participants, was succinctly articulated by Kelner (2004: 5) as 'The experience itself was a fast-paced bus-trek across Israel. Each group of approxi­ mately 40 people had its own itinerary, tour bus, driver, American staff ... and an Israeli facilitator, charged with presenting a narrative about the sites. Itineraries - relatively standardised - included visits to Jewish holy sites, tours of ancient and modern historical areas, nature, hikes, meeting with Israeli youth, social events, and guest lecturers on a variety of topics regarding Israel and Judaism.'

Background characteristics In both groups the participants were young, in their twenties. North American respondents were aged between 18 and 29 years (median age 20), compared to FSU participants, who were between the ages of 17 and 26 (median age 20). Among the 422 NA and 187 FSU respondents, the gender ratio was almost equal among NA participants but among FSU participants there was a gender imbal­ ance in favor of females. Table 1 shows that FSU participants already had achieved higher education levels compared to the NA participants.

Jewish background, education and affiliation As noted in Table 2, regarding formal Jewish education, it seems that NA participants report a much higher formal Jewish education, compared to partic­ ipants from the FSU, where 59% report no Jewish education at all. In addition, NA participants affiliate to a larger degree with major Jewish religious denomi­ nations (64%), compared to the predominantly non-denominational FSU Jews, of whom 73% reported being 'just Jewish'. The stronger Jewish background of NA participants can also be manifested through their almost twice a~~ high synagogue membership rates (Table 2).

Jewish social networks Perhaps the most critical variable is the fact that 44% of NA participants, compared to only 26% of FSU participants claimed that most or all of their friends are Jewish. Of NA participants, 37% compared to 40% of FSU partici­ pants, reported that some of their friends are Jewish. Nineteen percent of NA participants versus 31 % of FSU participants claimed that most or all of their friends are 110t Jewish. It seems that the majority of participants were involved to some degree within Jewish social networks, but participants from NA were much more involved. Authenticity Ethnicity and Heritage Tourism 89

Table 1 Demographic and socia-economic characteristics

North Former Soviet America (%) Uuioll (%)

Gender

Male 51 38 Female 49 62

Education

High school 70 58 Non-academic higher education 6 14 Academic 21 26 Other 3 2 Area of concentration

Medicine, law, engineering, etc. 25 21 Sciences 9 1

Social sciences 19 12

Humanities 22 41 Other 23 25

Analysis and Findings Descriptive overview Pre-trip ethnic identity: Jewish identity and attachment to Israel As already noted, the data include total population of buses and in the fol­ lowing analysis we have conducted paired sample I-tests over time. This was done to determine if the change in measures of ethnic identity over time were found to be statistically significant. This procedure conforms to previous research (e.g. Lev-Ari el aI., 2003; Mittelberg & Lev Ari, 1995). At the beginning of the programme, more than half of both NA and FSU participants thought it important or very important to belong to a Jewish community. More than 60%, in both groups, considered their being Jewish important or very important to them. However, with respect to their identity of diaspora citizenship, NA participants reported a much stronger citizenship identity compared to that reported by FSU participants (58% and 18%, respectively). Regarding their attachment to Israel, the 'homeland' of their diasporic identity, NA and FSU participants reported a similar degree of importance attached to the Israeli culture and their emotional bond to it. However, FSU participants perceived Israel as a source of pride to Jews in the diaspora, to an even higher degree than NA participants (86% and 72%, respectively). 90 Journol of Heritage Tourism

Table 2 Jewish education and denomination

North America FOJ'me1' Soviet (%) Union (%)

Formal Jewish education Jewish day school 36 13 Sunday school 21 12 Part-time JeWish education 16 1

No formal Jewish education 19 59

Other forms of Jewish education 8 15

Jewish affiliation

Conservative 35 4 Orthodox 15 5 Reform 14 5 Secular 8 7 Just Jewish 23 73 Other 5 6 Belong to a synagogue No 40 78 Yes 60 22

In short, measures of diaspora ethnic identity are similar between NA and FSU Jews. However, measures of diaspora citizenship identity are much higher among NA participants, while the homeland identity of perceiving Israel as a source of pride to diaspora Jews is higher among FSU participants (Tables 3 and 4).

Diaspora tourism: motivations to join the programme To explain the feelings of attachment to Israel, motivations correlahld (signifi­ cantly) with this feeling were examined. Of positively correlated motives with feelings of attachment to Israel, visiting the holy places was the highest, both among FSU and NA participants. Table 3 shows a comparison between NA and FSU participants, describing their motivations to join the programme. FSU participants were motivated more by visiting the holy places than the NA students, and the homogeneity of the FSU group was also higher. It could be argued that visiting the holy places was important and motivated almost all participants from the FSU, while NA participants are motivated to a lesser degree by this factor. The motivation to learn about Israeli society was also very high in both groups, but again, higher among FSU participants. Other motivations include Jewish fulfilment, the Authenticity Ethnicity and Heritage Tourism 91

Table 3. Motivations to join the programme

Motivation NA participants FSU participants (11 ~ 369) (11 ~ 170)

Mean SD Mean SD

Jewish fulfilment 3.99 0.94 3.79 1.04

Learning about Israeli society 4.06 0.79 4.31 0.64

Strengthening ties between 3.79 0.93 3.15 1.10 Jews in Israel and the diaspora

Meeting Israelis 3.84 0.90 3.76 0.84

Visiting the holy places 4.19 0.90 4.54 0.69

Just for fun 2.72 1.15 2.26 1.14

NA, North American, FSU, Former Soviet Unioni SD, standard, deviation.

Table 4 t-Test for paired sample: means (1 ~ low; 5 ~ high) of pre-trip and post-trip measures of Jewish identity, diaspora identity and attitudes towards Israel among North American (NA) and Former Soviet Union (FSU) participants' Identity and attitudes Pte-trip Post-trip t-Value Significance (2-tailed)

I Diaspora Jewish identity (a) Importance of belonging to the Jewish community

NA participants 3.67 3.89 -5.20 0.000

FSU participants 3.53 3.72 -2.78 0.006

(b) Being Jewish plays an important part in my life

NA participants 3.98 4.14 -4.38 0.000

FSU participants 3.78 3.89 -1.57 0.116

II Homeland component of diaspora Jewish identity

(a) Israeli culture is important to you

NA participants 3.64 3.78 -2.85 0.005

FSU participants 3.68 3.83 -2.19 0.030

(b) Israel as a source of pride for diaspora Jewry

NA participants 4.04 4.04 0.06 NS

FSU participants 4.25 4.29 -0.57 NS (Continued) 92 Journal of Heritage Tourism

Table 4 (Coniinued)

Identin) and attitudes Pre-trip Post-trip t-Value Significance (2-tailed) (c) Emotionally attached to Israel

NA participants 3.41 3.92 -3.93 0.000

FSU participants 3.45 3.94 -6.98 0.000 III Citizenship component of diaspora Jewish identity Being American/FSU plays an important part in my life NA participants 3.62 3.59 0.70 NS FSU participants 2.72 2.78 -0.48 NS

"NA, N ~ 326; FSU N ~ 155. NS, not significant. strengthening of ties between Jews in Israel and the diaspora, and meeting Israelis. These were higher among NA participants than among FSU partici­ pants, but at the same time there was a higher degree of consensus with these views amongst NA participants than among FSU participants, where the diver­ sity of responses was wider. Interestingly, and consistent with findings cited by Ioannides and Ioannides (2006), participants from both groups scored the 'leisure' motivation, 'Just for Fun', low, indicating that the dominant motiva­ tional cluster was from the domain of heritage diaspora tourism (Table 3). FSU participants were more interested in visiting the holy places and learn­ ing about Israeli society, whereas NA participants were motivated more by Jewish identity fulfiiment and Jewish and Israeli ties. These motivations were positively correlated with the post-programme feelings of attachment to Israel. Further analytical examination of how these motivations impact on post-trip feelings of attachment to Israel are analysed below.

Ethnification through heritage tourism Ethnic membership may commonly serve as a basis of pre-trip desires to visit the homeland. However, does the visit to that homeland have an impact on the post-trip ethnic identity of these travellers? To answer this question weldistin­ guished between three different content components of their ethnic identity: (1) The importance of their ethnic membership both as part of participants' personal identity and also in so far as they value belonging to an ethnic community; (2) The place that Israel as homeland plays in their self-perception as Jews, especially their emotional attachment to Israel; (3) By way of a quasi control, the degree to which the visit to Israel impacted their citizenship identity. As can be seen in Table 4, following the trip a positive significant change occurred among participants both from NA and FSU in response to the question: 'Is it importantto you to belong to the Jewish community?' For the question 'Does Authenticity Ethnicity and Heritage Tourism 93 being Jewish play an important part in your life?' the respondents indicated a similar slightly higher sense of identity at the conclusion of the programme, although the change was not statistically significant among the FSU respondents. In response to the question 'Is the Israeli culture important to you?', participants in botl1 groups reported a positive (and significant) mange. Regarding the ques­ tion 'To what extent do you see Israel as a source of pride and self-respect for diasporaJewry?', there is aIn1ostno mange, although the pre- and post-scores on this attitude remained high in both groups. In both of these items of identity the measures were already high at the beginning of the programme and thus remained high at the conclusion of the programme. However, the most dramatic mange among participants from both groups is the degree of emotional attachment to Israel, whim was not very high at the beginning of the programme but was strengthened during the trip. Similar to Noy (2004: 96), the experiences of tourists allow 'narratives of identity to be told, through the claim of a lasting self mange'. By way of comparison, in both groups no change was recorded on the meas­ ure of diaspora citizenship identity as an outcome of the visit to Israel for both NA and FSU participants.

Towards an explanation This section examines possible explanations for the positive increase in emotional attachment to Israel that followed the programme. One explana­ tion may lie in the differences in participants' Jewish ethnic background, which were described earlier. A second may lie in the different motivations to join the birthright israel programme - as a form of diaspora tourism - which may constitute another basis of explanation. Finally the structure and content of the experience in Israel- the programme itself - serves as another potential explanation. In the next sections the relative weight of these three different explanations will be examined.

Heritage tourism for diaspora youth: The structure of the experience in Israel What is the educational strategy utilised in this heritage tourism that evokes the attribution of subjective meaning to the sites and the experience? Kelner (2004) suggests that 'Birthright arranged its presentation of Israel in a way that encouraged tourists to project Jewish and Zionist meanings onto the sites. All trips address the following themes: (1) The nature of contemporary Israeli Society, (2) meetings with young Israelis, (3) Jewish values, (4) Zionism then and now, (5) an overview of Jewish history, and (6) the Holocaust and Jewish life. In order to ensure a personal implication in the collective Jewish narrative for the participants the final theme of "what it all means for us" is implemented' (Kelner, 2004: 9). Participants' satisfaction with the programme was also measured by the research instruments. It was found that more than 80% of respondents from NA were satisfied or very satisfied with the following components: the sites visited, the number of participants in the programme, the personalities of Israelis they met, and the relationships among the participants. More than 70% of the partici­ pants were satisfied with the types of participants in the programme and the educational activities. More than 60% of the participants were satisfied with the 94 Journal of Heritage Tourism quality of their religious experience. About half of the participants were satisfied with the number of Israelis they met. Regarding FSU participants, the hierarchy of their satisfaction with various aspects of the programme was slightly different from that of NA participants. More than 90% of respondents from the FSU were satisfied or very satisfied with the sites visited. More than 80% were highly satisfied with the number of participants in the programme. More than 70% of the participants were satis­ fied with the relationship among the participants, the educational activities, and the personalities of Israelis they met. Sixty percent or more were satisfied with the number of Israelis they met and the type of participants in the pro­ gramme. Only 39% were satisfied with the quality of their religious experience, which is not surprising considering their diminished formal background in Jewish education. It is also echoes to some degree the twofold analysis of tourist motivations of Cohen (2003). Generally the level of satisfaction with various aspects of the programme was higher among NA participants, compared with that of FSU participants, primarily on two measures: regarding relationships with other participants in their programme and the quality of their religious experience. Overall 75% of participants from both backgrounds reported a high degree of satisfaction with co-participants, enhancing their resource for inter-personal authenticity in the experience (Table 5).

Participant satisfaction and willingness to recommend the programme More than 80% of all participants reported that they would definitely rec­ ommend the birthright Israel programme, while around 10% would probably recommend it, and the rest were not sure. The tendency to recommend the

Table 5 Satisfaction with various components of the programme"

North America (%) Former Soviet Union (%) Type of participants 78 60

Number of participants 87 82 Relationship with participants 82 78 ) Number of Israelis met 53 66 "

Personalities of Israelis met 87 76

Sites that were visited 88 91

Quality of religious experience 69 39

Educational activities 73 78

"Percent of participants that reported in the two highest categories (4, satisfied; 5, very satisfied). Authenticity Ethnicity and Heritage Tourism 95

Table 6 Satisfaction with programme are components and willingness to recommend the programme by ethnic origin

North Former Soviet America Union Type of participants 0.292** 0.264**

Number of participants 0.233** 0.169*

Relationship with participants 0.260** 0.062

Number of Israelis met 0.150** 0.066

Personalities of Israelis met 0.261** 0.196*

Sites that were visited 0.417** 0.279**

Quality of religious experience 0.414** 0.071

The educational activities 0.400** 0.149

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01. programme is very high for both groups. This tendency to recommend the programme is positively correlated with all the programme components among the NA participants but especially the following: the sites visited, the quality of their religious experience, and the educational activities. Among FSU participants, fewer activities were positively correlated with the tendency to recommend the programme; those that were included the sites visited, the type of participants, and personalities of Israelis met (Table 6). Different programme components are positively related to the tendency to recommend the programme in both groups; however, overall it can be argued that the tendency to recommend the programme reflects satisfaction with particular program components. In the section that follows, a multivariate sum­ mary model is presented to analyse which variables best predict emotional attachment to Israel at the conclusion of the programme.

Testing the model: Heritage tourism as an agent of ethnification among diasporic Jewish youth To evaluate the differential weight of pre-trip heritage background on the interaction between traveller and site, a hierarchical regression model was developed. This model allows the holding of constant pre-trip variables to eval­ uate the independent contribution of measures of the experience, in addition to background and motivational pre-trip variables themselves (Hays, 1988). Here we utilise the method of multiple regression to evaluate 'the overall dependence of a variable on a set of independent variables' (Walsh, 1990: 273). The independent variables are included in hierarchical stages, according to the theoretical considerations described above, namely background, motivations and the experience itself, one group of independent variables after another. The Likert scale, used for the measurement of most of the variables related to 96 Journal of Heritage Tourism attitudes, is considered as the intervals for this purpose, as the intervals between its five categories are equal (Nardi, 2003). As indicated earlier, there are three, not mutually exclusive, possible expla­ nations for the degree of emotional attachment to Israel at the conclusion of the programme. It seems that for the NA participants (Tables 7 and 8, models 1 and 2), all three possible explanations predict high Israeli attachment at the conclusion of the programme. From equation 1 it seems that background characteristics such as pre-trip engagement in Jewish social networks and high synagogue attendance, as well as motivation to strengthen ties between

Table 7 Coefficients of hierarchical regression equations predicting emotional attachment to Israel among NA participants (n = 301)

Coefficients

Modell Ullstandardised Standm'dised t p coefficients coefficients B SE J3 1 (Constant) 1.207 0.431 2.800 0.005

Jewish social 0.160 0.054 0.158 2.978 0.003 networks

Jewish education -9.287E-02 0.074 -0.068 -1.259 0.209

Synagogue 0.192 0.076 0.139 2.537 0.012 attendance

Motivation for 3.78IE-02 0.073 0.035 0.519 0.604 Jewish fulfilment

Motivation to learn 1.201E-02 0.081 0.009 0.149 0.882 about Israeli society

Motivation to 0.340 0.073 0.313 4.639 0.000 strengthen ties between Jews in Israel and diaspora

Motivation to visit 6.395E-02 0.071 0.056 0.895 0.372 the holy places

2

(Constant) 0.179 0.496 0.361 0.718

Jewish social 0.169 0.053 0.167 3.211 0.001 networks

(Continued) Authenticity Ethnicity and Heritage Tourism 97

Table 7 (Colltillued)

Coefficients

Modell U1Jstandardised Standardised t p coefficients coefficients B SE J3 Jewish education -9.491E-02 0.072 -0.070 -1.317 0.189

Synagogue 0.193 0.074 0.140 2.621 0.009 attendance

Motiva tion for 2.990E-02 0.071 0.028 0.420 0.675 Jewish fulfilment

Motiva tion to learn -4.528E-02 -0.080 -0.034 -0.565 0.573 about Israeli society

Motiva tien to 0.325 0.072 0.299 4.540 0.000 strengthen ties between Jews in Israel and diaspora

Motivation to visit 4.001E-02 0.070 0.035 0.571 0.568 the holy places

Willingness to 0.303 0.077 0.206 3.927 0.000 recommend the programme

SE, standard error.

Table 8 Model summary

Model R R' Adjusted R' SE of tile estimate

1 0.488 0.238 0.220 0.902

2 0.526 0.276 0.257 0.880 SE, standard error.

Jews in Israel and the diaspora, explain about 24% of the variance in the post­ trip emotional attachment to Israel. The pre-trip motivational importance of Jewish fulfilment, learning about Israeli society, and visiting the holy places, do not contribute explanatory power for the post-trip emotional attachment to Israel. When examining equation 2, where the experiential variable (will­ ingness to recommend the programme) was added to the equation, the latter variable contributed an additional 4% of explanatory power to a total R2 of 0.276 (Table 8). Once again, Jewish social networks, synagogue attendance 98 Journal of Heritage Tourism

and motivation were found to strengthen ties between Jews in Israel and the diaspora and continue to contribute independently to the explanatory power of the equation. Interestingly enough, a different picture arises regarding FSU participants. In contrast to NA participants, none of the background variables made any statis­ tically significant contribution to the explanation of post-trip emotional attach­ ment to Israel. However, in equation 2, while the motivation for Jewish fulfilment approaches statistical significance, only the experiential variable (willingness to recommend the progranune) explains 19% of the post-programme attachment to Israel (Tables 9 and 10). It seems that although in both groups a similar progranune was experienced (indeed there was a mandatory identical itinerary for both, implemented by the

Table 9 Coefficients of hierarchical regression equations predicting emotional attachment to Israel among FSU participants (11 = 126) Coefficients

Model l.lllsfalldm'dised StaudaJ'dised t p coefficiellts coefficients

B SE J3 1

(Constant) 2.195 0.790 2.780 0.006

Jewish social networks 3.166E-02 0.074 0.038 0.426 0.671

Jewish education -0.121 0.122 -0.095 -0.993 0.323

Synagogue attendance 0.108 0.119 0.084 0.915 0.362

Motivation for Jewish 0.128 0.078 0.159 1.640 0.104 fulfilment

Motivation to learn 0.155 0.115 0.126 1.349 0.180 about Israeli society

Motivation to strengthen ties 8.727E-02 0.072 0.119 1.213 ~.227 between Jews in Israel and diaspora

Motivation to visit the 8.067E-02 0.113 0.066 0.712 0.478 holy places

2

(Constant) 9.713E-02 1.091 0.089 0.929

Jewish social networks 7.045E-02 0.074 0.084 0.954 0.342

Jewish education -0.126 0.119 -0.099 -1.061 0.291

(continued) Authenticity Ethnicity and Heritage Tourism 99

Table 9 (continued) Coefficients (a)

Model Unstandm'dised Standardised t p coefficients coefficients B SE f3 Synagogue attendance 7.828E-02 0.116 0.060 0.675 0.501

Motivation for Jewish 0.131 0.076 0.163 1.724 0.087 fulfilment

Motivation to learn 0.100 0.114 0.082 0.881 0.380 about Israeli society

Motivation to strengthen ties 7.194E-02 0.070 0.098 1.024 0.308 between Jews in Israel and diaspora

Motivation to visit the 8.699E-02 0.110 0.071 0.788 0.432 holy places

Willingness to recom- 0.470 0.173 0.236 2.711 0.008 mend the programme SE, standard error.

Table 10 Model summary

Model R R' Adjusted R' SE of the estimate

1 0.373 0.139 0.088 0.76406

2 0.436 0.190 0.135 0.74430 same travel provider and the same educational provider), owing to different Jewish backgrounds and different motivations for joining the programme, dif­ ferent patterns of impact were discerned. The experiential component was more prominent among FSU participants, while among NA students, stronger Jewish background and pre-trip motivations regarding strengthening ties between Jews in Israel and the diaspora appear to explain the high post-trip scores of attachment to Israel.

Discussion and Conclusion The purpose of this study was to examine the role of heritage tourism among travellers from a diaspora visiting their homeland. The case of multi-local and culturally plural diasporas visiting the same homeland allows tourism sociolo­ gists to investigate the differential weight of pre-trip heritage backgrounds on the interaction between traveller and site, indeed to confirm that the heritage 100 Journal of Heritage Tourism experience lies not in the site itself, but rather in its differential interpretation, so that travel in general and heritage tourism in particular play important roles in the reflexive discovery and affirmation of an unfolding authentic diasporic identity through engagement with the culture and society of the homeland, in this case, the birthright Israel experience (see also Saxe et a!., 2004, for similar findings on a large North American sample). Heritage tourism takes on a new meaning when conceived and implemented in the framework of a diaspora homeland context. Background is no longer a neutral or foreign variable to be affected by a cross-cultural experience, but a part of the experience itself - a structurally based pre-trip experience of motiva­ tion and anticipation for travel and the return home. Closer to pilgrimage than to recreational tourism, the heritage tourism reported here was ambitious, pur­ posive in its goal of educational transformation of participants in their ethnic identity, and to be sustained long after the return home. Two groups of diaspora youth were examined in this study. Although the two groups were from the same age cohort, their Jewish background, including their diasporas of origin, was different. North American participants reported a much stronger Jewish background than participants from the FSU and were more involved in Jewish social networks. Despite these differences in back­ ground, the initial Jewish identity of both groups was high and almost similar (a slight advantage to NA participants). However, with regard to attachment to Israel, FSU participants expressed higher emotional attachment to Israel than did NA participants. At the conclusion of the trip, overall Jewish identity and the degree of emotional attachment to Israel were strengthened, with the most dramatic change being higher post-trip emotional attachments to Israel. Although the general intention to recommend the programme was very high in both groups, each group experienced Israel differently. In a similar manner, each group had anticipated and perceived its experi­ ence differently and was subsequently ethnically affected differently. North American participants were highly motivated to 'belong' to their diasporic Jewish community, and this feeling intensified through the trip. FSU partici­ pants followed a similar pattern, although from a lower benchmark. By con­ trast, although for North Americans being a diasporicJew became significantly more central in their personal lives, for the FSU group there was no significant change in this measure during the same type of trip. Similarly, although nei­ ther NA nor FSU participants reported any change in their country of origin citizenship identity, for FSU participants both the pre- and post-trip~scores were far lower than for North Americans. Summing up, the greater measure of indifference or alienation from society of origin for FSU respondents did not facilitate a heightened local Jewish identity except on the measure of a heightened attachment to Israel. For NA participants, both things occurred to a significant degree - the enhancement of an American ethnic Jewish identity per se as well as attachment to Israel. Trip organisers utilise a form of heritage tourism that identifies the signifiers of national collective identity or what we prefer to call Peoplehood and con­ structs an experience of authenticity that supports in a manner similar to Noy (2004) a newly reconstructed narrative of personal and collective identity, which bridges the diapora and homeland identities. in the case of the FSU tourists, the Authenticity Ethnicity and Heritage Tourism 101 encounter with Israeli culture liberates them from their previous marginality and gives structure to what was heretofore symbolic ethnicity, the tourist communi!as coming instead of an absent ethnic community of origin. For the North Americans the primary and different signifier was religion, which reso­ nated even more loudly with the religious signifiers that were actually accepta­ ble in their diaspora of origin, but in this case enriched the meaning of that membership into something larger than sectarian allegiance to a religion they had previously shared. Attachment to Israel now served as an additional and powerful dimension of that very same group identity. These data reveal that each group of tourists was able to attain a significant degree of existential authenticity (Wang, 1999), which the pluralistic framework of the programme allowed. Although they did not come to the experience with the same background - far from it - nor did they interpret the experience in the same way; they responded to different signifiers in the framework of the pro­ gramme. Nevertheless, both groups were able to live through an existential state of authenticity that impacted their subsequent ethnic identity. Their self­ identity was impacted by their experience with their tourist peers and by their engagement with the sites and citizens of Israel. For both groups, Jewish ethnic identity was strengthened, especially their emotional attachment to Israel. However, the difference between the two groups was found primarily in the actual factors that explain this post-trip attachment to Israel. The experiential component was more prominent among FSU participants, while among NA students stronger Jewish background and higher pre-trip motivations regarding strengthening ties between Israel and the diaspora provide an explanation for their high post-trip scores of attach­ ment to Israel. Israel thus serves as the liminal domain of diaspora tourists, regardless of which vastly different diaspora they originated from. Indeed, following Hollingshead (1998) and Coles and Timothy (2004), this study observed how the diaspora tourism studied here has contributed to the fluid unfolding nature of diasporic identities. At the subjective level of the participant, the authenticity of this experience is not contingent on being an exchange with an unspoilt other, rather following Wang (1999), on being a meaningful encounter with one's self and one's people, for whom heritage has been made central by the experience. Thus, authenticity and pre-trip ethnicity, as latent as the latter may be, inter­ twine experientially to generate an expansion of the frame of individual iden­ tity. The aggregate consequences of these changes contribute something larger than the individual experiences of growth and sometimes transformation. They embed this individual experience in a new structure of belonging, of collective allegiance where Peoplehood and not just citizenship are primordial markers of corporate being, where the fact of multi-local diasporas connected to a spiritual homeland becomes a new reference point for individual identity, wherever the tourist's permanent place of residence happens to be. In this world, travel has become a rite of passage par excellence, where place is transcended by late-modern compressions of space and by the redefinition of its subjective meaning for the participant. In this way, heritage travel serves to reconstitute the ethnic identity that travellers bring home and in time perhaps, the 'glocal' social world in which travellers live and move. 102 Journal of Heritage Tourism

Correspondence Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Lilach Lev Ari, Oranim, Academic College of Education and Bar Han University, Mobile Post, Zivon 36006, Israel. ([email protected]).

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