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Consuming the Homeland: Luxury Commodities and Diaspora Tourism in Israel
Abstract
Tourism, as both a performative act and lucrative economy, actively shapes the way Jewish history and the contemporary concept of a Jewish nation-state is understood in the diaspora. Having established itself as the ostensible homeland of an exiled people returning to their place of origin, Israel cultivates tourist experiences based on the marketing of goods and services that sidestep—or altogether destroy—competing histories of indigeneity. In this paper, I will demonstrate how Israeli boutique commodities play an integral role in the ways in which middle- and upper-class Jews of the diaspora conceive of their attachment to the state and their ability to play a part in shaping contemporary Israeli society through personal consumption and taste. Though recent research has explored the fashioning of Israeli identity through architecture, archaeology, and art, it is yet to take into account the role of the largely diasporic Jewish population in shaping identity through tourist consumption. By analyzing the Jewish tourist’s experience in Israel, my research examines the ways in which differing narratives of Jewishness vie for representation through commodities marketed to diasporic visitors and, in turn, the means by which such products strengthen the tourist’s connection to the state. While engaging with critical theory that addresses tourism and diaspora studies and the cooptation of indigenous ephemera for the purpose of marketing, this project utilizes interviews and site visits conducted in Israel/Palestine to explore trends in luxury consumption—from the purchasing of Dead Sea products to the expansion of luxury wineries across the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights—as integral to ways in which visiting Jews build connections to Israel as a contemporary, dynamic state during tourist experiences. Influenced by scholarship that considers sites such as archaeological digs and museums as loci of colonial knowledge in their attempt to establish scientific and indisputable evidence about the society at hand, I examine the ways in which concepts of belonging are mobilized in the construction of tourist sites to prove Jewish indigeneity and exalt Jewish history and contemporary culture. Crucial to my analysis is how high-end souvenirs, artisanal products, and experiences such as tour packages act as a contemporary iteration of the Zionist trope of “working the soil with one’s own hands,” thus allowing vacationers to feel as though they are personally partaking in the continuation and flourishing of the Jewish homeland, and collectively fortifying dominant narratives of a Jewish right to the land.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Israel
Sub Area
Diaspora/Refugee Studies