LAUSR

This Special Issue resulted from a public seminar on spiritual tourism held inNovember 2015 atMonashUniversity, Australia. The seminar revolved around andwas inspired by the “Monk for aMonth” travel packages organized by World Weavers, a Melbourne-based organization. The discussions centered around three main interrelated themes: testimonies of participants with a special emphasis on the possibility of having authentic spiritual experiences in commercialized tourism contexts, the social conditions inWestern societies that arguably cultivate the demand for spiritual tourism, and the challenges of tourism entrepreneurs to offer authentic and sustainable spiritual products. The seminar brought together tourists, practitioners, and academics. Asmight be expected from such a diverse forum, the discussion was not purely academic, and while sometimes polemic, it was always intriguing. Encouraged by our first meeting, we decided to meet again for an extended dialogue between a practitioner and a scholar: Ben Bowler and Yaniv Belhassen. This meeting took place at Melbourne on February 29, 2016. Ben: I understand that back home you are also a peace activist, and I am curious to know if in your organization there are also religious people, or if it is a purely secular group? Yaniv: There are some religious people in “Combatants for Peace.” Intuitively, I would say that most of these are on the Palestinian side, but you can find a few religious people on the Israeli side too. However, the Israeli peace camp is quite secular, maybe with the exception of “Rabbis for Human Rights.” Ben: It is important that there is also a spiritual aspect to this activism. It is a cause for optimism.Doyouhave a spiritualmotivation behind your activism? Yaniv: I am not religious, but I grewup inwhatwe in Israel call a traditional home typical to Sephardic Jews whose families emigrated from Muslim countries. For me, the link between Judaism and peace activism