Tourism, Charity, and Profit: The Movement of Money in Moroccan Jewish Pilgrimage

Religious Needs in the Hospitality Industry

“…More specifically, the paper investigates special religious desires of Christian tourists while being hosted by the hospitality industry in Israel. Previous works dealing with religious tourists have tended to concentrate on and analyse their behaviour as pilgrims (Bhandwaj, 1983;Collins-Kreiner and Kliot, 2000;Digance, 2003;Dhar and Gupta, 1999;Fleischer, 2000;Gibbons, 1999;Kosansky, 2002;Le beau, 1996;Mishara, 2000;Shachar and Shoval, 1999;Sizer, 1997Sizer, , 1999Turner and Turner, 1978;Western, 1998;William et al, 2002). Unlike the aforementioned studies, this paper focuses on the value of satisfying the more routine religious needs of regular tourists in the hospitality industry.…”

Place Replaced: Colonial Nostalgia and Pied-Noir Pilgrimages to Malta

“…On first learning about these voyages, I was thrilled. I envisioned them as ancestral heritage pilgrimages-similar to those found among other diasporic groups (Lowenthal 1996:9-10; see also Basu 2001;Kosansky 2002)-serving to further develop or reinforce the Maltese facets of identity and ties to fellow association members. We might also assume that these journeys would serve to awaken "lost" memories for these travelers, to revitalize their lapsed membership in an imagined ancestral community.…”

“…We might also assume that these journeys would serve to awaken "lost" memories for these travelers, to revitalize their lapsed membership in an imagined ancestral community. Given the centrality of their Catholic faith, I expected that a principal activity in Malta would involve trips to their home villages and parish churches, not unlike the hillulot (pilgrimages to saints' shrines) for Moroccan Jews (see Kosansky 2002). These voyages would surely reflect Malta's significance to the maintenance of this collective identity, I believed, and given our knowledge of the significance of homeland to other long-exiled populations, I assumed that Malta itself would play a central role in the group's collective memory.…”

Auctioning Patronage in Northeast Brazil: The Political Value of Money in a Ritual Market

“…For Jean Baudrillard (1981:117), the exchange value of the money bid at the European art auction is “transmuted” (transduced) into a “sign value”—namely, that of “aristocratic parity” among wealthy bidders. Oren Kosansky's study (2002) of sacred charity auctions in Morocco shows how wealthy tourists transduce the capital they bid into quantities of spiritual devotion, which the saints then convert to “divine recompense” to ensure the bidders’ prosperity. In the process, Moroccan charity auctions reproduce hierarchies of wealth among Jewish pilgrims by framing them as hierarchies of piety (Kosansky 2002:389).…”