Page 105 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

in the frivolities—or worse—of consumer culture, the broadcasters could not
but adopt a language and a style unfamiliar to traditional Ashkenazi ultra-
Orthodoxy, more streetwise, less hidebound, less weighed down by the somnif-
erous tones of traditional yeshivas (Torah study seminaries and centers), a trend
reinforced by the intervention of free-booting social and religious entrepre-
neurs in media previously unused by ultra-Orthodoxy.
All this does not mean that the core of the t’shuva movement is not deeply
rooted in yeshiva life. But social movements are like concentric circles, with a
hard center (the “cadres”) and ever softer peripheries, and they conform social
spaces linked not by organizational structures but by inferential symbols em-
bodied as we have indicated, in language, posters, iconic ¤gures, and much more
besides.

Pirate Radios in the Broadcasting System

Until 1999 the Israeli state had direct legal control of all nationwide ra-
dio and TV stations through the Israel Broadcasting Authority. Only in 1995
were private commercial radio stations permitted, and operated exclusively at
6
the local level under a franchise arrangement with the Israel Broadcasting Au-
thority. The state monopoly had been challenged long before, though more for
political reasons, by unof¤cial “pirate” broadcasting, which began in 1973 when
dissident political groups, ¤rst those who opposed the country’s occupation of
the West Bank and later those who opposed settlers in the selfsame West Bank,
began transmitting from ships offshore. By 1995 “more than 50” active pirate
stations were identi¤ed, and in the late 1990s they were no longer particu-
larly political, broadcasting mainly music and entertainment (Caspi and Limor
7
1999). After some resistance from their senior leader, Rav Schach, the Ash-
kenazi haredi community began to use radio stations, although they remain
controversial in this prickly constituency, and today there seems to be only one
pirate station broadcasting speci¤cally in the idiom of the Ashkenazi haredim—
Kol Simcha (The Voice of Celebration). However, radio transmission enables
people to cross boundaries without doing so too publicly, and there is no reason
to believe that Ashkenazim do not listen to other stations of a more Sephardi
complexion. The stations’ broadcasts, despite their Sephardi tinge re®ected in
accent, style, and music, do not give any space to material expressing some of
the resentment against Ashkenazim, which we have heard in interviews.
Although the Sephardi tinge is not explicitly promoted, it is a very important
feature of these radios’ broadcasting and of their appeal, expressed in broad-
casters’ accents, in much accompanying music, even in the streetwise language
they use. This appeal is most straightforwardly explained by the limited pres-
ence of Oriental music and culture in the of¤cial stations. Those stations only
broadcast one hour of Oriental content until a few years ago, but even now,
though the amount has increased, the content is not in tune with Israeli popular
taste, let alone with the religious tastes of the t’shuva movement or of Shas fol-

94 David Lehmann and Batia Siebzehner