Feld­man takes an anthro­po­log­i­cal approach to the pil­grim­ages made by most Israeli teenagers to Poland to bear wit­ness to Holo­caust his­to­ry, illu­mi­nat­ing the prac­tice as a series of rit­u­als and sym­bol­ic ges­tures and rais­ing ques­tions about the cre­ation of Jew­ish and Israeli iden­ti­ties on the basis of a his­to­ry of geno­cide and a future of per­pet­u­al mourn­ing. Feld­man, a native New York­er who now lec­tures in anthro­pol­o­gy at Ben Guri­on Uni­ver­si­ty, has led numer­ous youth trips to Poland and has stud­ied the phe­nom­e­non in depth, writ­ing at once aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and lyri­cal­ly about the impact these trips have on par­tic­i­pants, the push to be per­for­ma­tive of Israeli iden­ti­ty while on the ground in Poland and to memo­ri­al­ize and remem­ber the Shoah into their adult lives, long after the last sur­vivors are gone. He is crit­i­cal of the trope of Israeli nation­al­ism these voy­ages impose and the unbal­anced view of con­tem­po­rary Poland they present, but ulti­mate­ly sees them as a way for youth to work through a col­lec­tive, his­tor­i­cal nation­al trau­ma and car­ry the mem­o­ry of the Holo­caust with them in a vis­cer­al way forever