Page 21 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

ArtScroll’s own interpretations. Such an intersection of practices of religious
mediation with the logic of commodity exchange in the information society is
an important aspect of public religion. It seems that as much as commodi¤ca-
tion is one of the prime strategies for religions to assert their presence in the
neoliberal religious marketplace (see also Moore 1994), outreach in space always
implies the risk of loss of control over believers’ interpretations and of the mes-
sage “watering down.”
While Stolow focuses on the spread of ultra-orthodox literature throughout
the Jewish diaspora, David Lehmann and Batia Siebzehner, in chapter 4, exam-
ine the adoption of new media such as pirate radio by ultra-orthodox Sephardi
groups in Israel. These groups, represented by the Shas Party, oppose not only
the secular state establishment but have found an alternative mode of conveying
their message to that used by the more textually oriented Ashkenazi haredim.
Shas has successfully nestled itself in the t’shuva movement that strives to bring
“lost Jews” back to religious observance and has established itself as the embodi-
ment of Sephardi identity, and thus is located in one of the many bounded en-
claves that characterize Israeli society. By combining with Sephardi identity, the
t’suva movement seeks to reach beyond its own enclave and to manifest itself
in public space by making extensive use of radio. The existence of a great num-
ber of pirate radio stations testi¤es to the incapacity of the Israeli state to con-
trol access to this medium and endorse the broadcasting of programs in line
with secular imperatives. Developing a distinct style, which is grounded in
popular culture and is far more streetwise than traditional expressions of ultra-
orthodoxy, the t’shuva movement markets the “return” to religious observance
as being perfectly compatible with entertainment and matters of everyday life.
In attempting to recapture those who are “lost,” the movement adopts a new
religious style that is more or less in line with the exigencies of the radio format
and close to the sphere of entertainment.
This con®uence of popular culture, religious renewal, and media not only
brings about new styles of being orthodox but also new media personalities
such as Amnon Yitzchak. A fervent opponent of television as the prime me-
dium of the secular state, Yizchak runs his own one-man road show which he
records and markets as videos and cassettes. In ways similar to the media strate-
gies of the Universal Church in Brazil, he, too, strives for spectacular mass
performances aimed to draw people into the t’shuva community. Relying on
funds from fans, Yitzchak is able to freely distribute a vast number of video
and audio cassettes in which he assaults and ridicules secular politicians, from
Ben Gurion to the contemporary Israel establishment and even George W.
Bush. There are striking similarities between the t’shuva movement and the
Pentecostal-charismatics in Brazil. And elsewhere a new religious format has
emerged as well, evolving around charismatic media personalities that have
developed new stylistic repertoires devoted to mass participation. These in-
clude the charismatic Malian Muslim Haidara in Mali (see chapter 6); the Turk-
ish divinity professor Yasar Nuri Öztürk known for his televisual performance
(see chapter 11); the Egyptian television personality Amr Khalid, who success-

10 Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors