Jewish Travel and Tourism in the Modern Era

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

This panel reevaluates current approaches to histories of Jewish travel and tourism from the late 19th to the end of the 20th century. Rather than simply a journey in time to a lost past—a “pilgrimage of nostalgia”—Jewish travelers in the modern era actively engaged with non-Jewish locals, various forms of Jewishness, and new governmental structures. Covering both personal and communal aspects of travel, this panel will demonstrate how Jews constantly renegotiated their self-understanding in relation to the sites and people they visited and how these encounters shaped local governments and communities. Starting in the late 19th century, Melissa R. Klapper explores overseas travel experiences of American Jewish women into the 1940s. By showing how female travelers sought out Jewish sites and socialized with other Jewish travelers, she demonstrates a shift toward travel as explorations of Jewish communities. Oskar Czendze takes a closer look at American Jewish tourism in the 1920s and 1930s. Examining the journeys of Galician Jews from New York to Poland, he emphasizes the importance of imperial notions of regional belonging in shaping a Jewish homeland in the new nation-states of eastern Europe. Staying in Poland, Yechiel Weizman visualizes how emotional visits to abandoned Jewish sites during the 1960s and 1980s reinforced insecurities among locals and triggered state officials to change policies, demonstrating an interest to protect Jewish sites in the Polish interest. Natalia Aleksiun shows how political transformations in post-communist Poland and Ukraine shaped a new practice of Jewish tourism. Holocaust survivor groups actively sought out interactions with locals as part of their journey to their ancestral hometowns. Ultimately, each panelist complicates the dominant framework of heritage tourism and presents Jewish travel as a dynamic encounter between the past and present of Jewish sites.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish History in Europe, Asia, Israel, and Other Communities

Chair

• Daniel Soyer, Fordham University

Individual Presentations

• Jewish Journeys: American Jewish Women and Jewishness Abroad, 1865-1940 - Melissa Klapper, Rowan University

• Between Imperial Past and the Nation-State. New York Jews Face Cultural Alienation in Interwar Poland - Oskar Czendze, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Fear and Paranoia in the Shtetl. Jews Visiting Jewish Spaces in Communist Poland - Yechiel Weizman, Bar Ilan University, Israel

• "And Here Stood a Famous Bakery": Visiting Former Jewish Hometowns in Poland and Ukraine after 1989 - Natalia Aleksiun, Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 02