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 1743-873X/08/02 79-25 $20.00/0 © 2008 Taylor & Francis JOURNAL O F H ERITAGE TOURISM Vol. 3, No. 2, 2008 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