Tour Guide Confidential

Send a text Our guest, Michelle Levitz, is a tour guide based in Zichron Yaakov, Israel. Michelle shares her fascinating background, growing up in a multicultural home in New Jersey with a Yemeni-Israeli father and a mother from the United States. Her upbringing in an open and welcoming Orthodox Jewish community contributed to her passion for guiding and sharing different cultural perspectives with others. We discuss the challenges of leading multi-generational family groups and the imp...

Send a text I had an interesting conversation with my friend and fellow tour guide Adam Wadell that touched on issues surrounding educational tourism as well as interfaith relations and guiding in the post October 7th world. In addition to our shared American upbringing, Adam and I have many things in common including an interest in environmental policy and a focus on educational tourism. We talked about our experience of working on programs that bring people to Israel to better understand th...

Send a text In this episode, tour guide Haike Winter, returns to Tour Guide Confidential to share her experience of volunteering in a dairy farm during the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Like all tour guides in Israel, Haike was left unemployed by the war that began with the massacre of October 7, 2023. A "milker" since the 1980s, Haike has volunteered twice for the cowshed of Nir Oz, a small kibbutz in the Gaza envelope that was devastated by the pogrom. This is the kibbutz from which...

Send a text Anita Andziak is a Swiss-based tour guide and tour leader, PhD candidate and Virtual Tourism expert. Her passion is the combination of artificial intelligence and tourism. We sat down in January of 2022 to talk about the promises and pitfalls of Virtual Reality both during the pandemic and as we stride into the metaverse of the 21st century. Based on her research and professional experience, Anita discusses the ways in which customer behavior, cultural changes and the geopol...

Send a text In this episode, I sat down with Aliza Bellehsen Avshalom in her beautiful home in the Galilee for a wide ranging discussion based on her decades of experience as a tour guide in Israel. Among other topics, we talked about Aliza's fascinating familial connection to Israel, growing up in New Jersey and what led her to train as a tour guide. We discussed her background of working with youth tours and educational tourism; environmental tourism and her love of hiking and the Lan...

Send a text In this episode, Yoni Shapira shares his rich, decades long involvement in tourism. He recalls how, as an oceanography student, he entered into this field as well as his long model making career or “life in miniature” at Mini Israel and elsewhere. Most importantly, we talked about the split between Guides focused on Incoming Tourism and those who work with the Domestic Tourism market and how this led to the creation of the organization Moreshet Derech or the Israeli Incoming Tour ...

Send a text In this episode I met with Tamar Linchevsky, a consummate storyteller who has been guiding for some thirty years. Unique in her approach to guiding, she takes her guests on inner and outer journeys of discovery based on the ideas of Joseph Campbell's archetypal "Hero's Journey". In our conversation, we discuss the current challenges and Tamar shares some of her own inspirational journey as well as the role that archetypal stories play in our lives. In addition, I...

Send a text In this episode, Tour Guide Confidential Host Dr. Eyal Dujovny has a conversation with Amir Katz and talks about his background and upbringing, how he got into guiding and what kind of a guide he is. Dr. Dujovny explains the impetus for this podcast, the way in which it was a Corona-times project and the importance of building a digital library that is an oral history of these trying times and episodes that serve as a calling card for guides. Moreover, he talks about his favorite ...

Send a text I sat down with Elinoar Nitzani to discuss the fascinating trajectory that eventually led her to a career as a tour guide. A polyglot who guides in four languages, Elinoar shares her interesting perspective as someone who has, from an early age, lived in various places around the world. Passionate about the natural world, Elinoar relates how she pursued a degree in agriculture and how this eventually led her to the budding new field of agricultural tourism. As a leader in agricult...

Send a text In this episode, I sat down with Ori Unterman, to discuss her rootedness as a 7th generation Jerusalemite and her passion for guiding in this truly unique, complex, and holy city. Few guides know the city as well as she does, and we discussed what is special about guiding in Jerusalem as well as how the city – which is usually heavily touristed – has weathered the ongoing corona crisis. In addition, we raised the issue of gender and how it can affect the choices that guides make w...

Send a text My friend and colleague Rinat Bloom sat down with me for a wide-ranging talk in which we discussed her eclectic background, various experiences as a tour guide, her insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge, as well as our unbridled love for our adopted hometown of Haifa. In the episode, Rinat shares how she found her true passion as a tour guide after surviving breast cancer and how the current coronavirus crisis has upended the tourism sector. We talk about her experience of...

Send a text I sat down with Daniel Rubenstein to discuss the interesting path that led him from the United States to Israel and from a career in Israel advocacy to his current role as a licensed Israeli tour guide. Daniel holds a degree in Middle Eastern studies, worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, and immigrated to Israel in 2011. Daniel served in the Spokesperson's Unit of the Israel Defense Forces, where he pioneered the unit's use of social media...

Send a text I sat down with Ihab Zeidan and we explored the question of where culture, religion, ethnicity, and language intersect and what role this plays in Ihab’s guiding as a member of the Druze community. Ihab lives in the town of Usfiya located on Mount Carmel on the outskirts of Haifa and it is one of 17 or so Druze-majority villages in Israel. For those who are not familiar with the Druze religion or its beliefs, Ihab is a fantastic guide with a deep knowledge of his cultu...

Send a text I sat down with Kamal Mukarker, a Palestinian tour guide and educator who is preparing a new generation of Palestinian tour guides. We had an in-depth and far-ranging discussion about his family’s background, the upheavals that they have suffered due to the last 100 years of conflict, his mother’s upbringing in Germany, the state of the Christian community in the Holy Land and broader Middle East, tour guide training in the Palestinian Authority, normalization, the difficult...

Send a text In this episode, I spoke with Dr. Yaron Ovadia to discuss his experience as a tour guide specializing in Islam and Middle East Studies as well as his his fieldwork among the Bedouins of the Judean Desert. Dr. Ovadia recalled his experience as a nature guide, his academic interests and decision to pursue a PhD and his thoughts on the pros and cons of the tour guide training course. In addition, we spoke in depth about the anthropological nature of his fieldwork among the Bedouin. L...

Send a text Naomi Ehrlich Kuperman, my guest for this weeks episode, has been guiding for over 40 years and kindly reached out to me to share her passion for guiding. Naomi and I had a far-ranging conversation that touched on the tour guide training course and how it has not kept up with the times, relations between guides and drivers, her experience of guiding Germans and how this has changed over time, and how she survived and overcame previous crises such as the first and second Intifadas ...

Send a text I drove down to Mosh Pedaya, which is about 30 minutes outside of Tel Aviv to have tea with my friend and colleague Rotem Shahar and to discuss her fascinating journey from the soil science lab to being a licensed tour guide in Israel. In this episode, we discussed a broad range of subjects including the role of gender in guiding and career in general, her favorite types of tourism, why she has decided to take a step back from Birthright, and how she has carved out a niche as a vi...

Send a text I sat down with Daniel Sigalov and we discussed his family's struggle to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel and how this has impacted his life and his firm belief in the promise of free markets as the most effective way to ensure prosperity and the common good. We debate the role of government interventions in the tourism industry, such as the requirement for tour guide licensing and the certification of tourist vehicles. Daniel shares some of his entrepreneurial initiatives...

Send a text In this interview with Amir Katz, we cover a broad range of topics starting from his upbringing in the States, his Israeli roots and how he found his way to Israel, the importance of building relationships with guests as well as the challenge of being emotionally present while on tour. In addition, we talked about guiding the Arab-Israeli conflict, educational tourism, and Christian pilgrimage tourism. Amir shared with us his latest tourist initiatives - from a wine tour app in Te...

Send a text For this episode, I drove down to Jerusalem to interview licensed tour Guide Peter Gokhvat, who has been camped out and on hunger strike across from the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) and the Finance Ministry for over 40 days. Soft-spoken and humble, Peter discussed his upbringing, immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union and laid out the demands that tour guides have regarding the current coronavirus crisis and the need for a clear, government-backed, exit strategy. He al...

Send a text Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, Dr. David Gurevich has been ahead of the curve in seeing the potential of online events to provide a virtual space for guides. So, it seems only appropriate that we met over Zoom to unpack what he has learned from this experience, as well as to discuss his activism on behalf of tour guides struggling to obtain their unemployment benefits. In addition, we discussed the benefits and potential pitfalls of being a tour guide with an academic ...

Send a text In this episode, I sit down with Mordechai Abraham to discuss current political efforts to unite all tour guides under a new umbrella federation or united front. Mordechai talks about his dedication to the State of Israel and how he and those of his generation do not take it for granted, but rather see it as a precious gift. He recounts his personal experiences surrounding the founding of the State, the War of Independence, his father's escape from Germany, the loss of loved ones ...

Send a text In this episode, I sit down with the indefatigable Haike Winter. Originally from Germany, Haike shares her fascinating story of how she has made her life in Israel and we discussed numerous topics such as life on the kibbutz, working as a guide with Christian pilgrim groups, relations between guides and drivers, the tourist economy of Israel, the Arab-Israeli conflict and our current uncertain future as guides in the face of the Covid crisis. Perhaps inevitably, our discussion als...

Send a text In this week’s featured episode, I share my conversation with the brilliant and charming Myriam Nedjar Kadouche. Myriam is a veritable polyglot who is licensed to guide in no fewer than four languages and brings years of experience in guiding groups from all over the world. She shares with us about her fascinating multicultural upbringing and how her immersion in other cultures has impacted her guiding. Specifically, we ponder to what extent this background, with all its crosscurr...

Send a text In this inaugural episode of Tour Guide Confidential, I sat down with Moria Gabsi of Foot for Thought (footforthoughts.com) to discuss the promise and pitfalls of ethnographic or cultural tourism. Contrary to the common view of Israel as a black and white battleground between Jew and Arab, the country is blessed with a rich cultural mosaic of numerous ethnic and religious groups that practice coexistence daily. We discuss how cultural changes that stem from the forces of modernity...