Culture and Communication in Israel: The Transformation of Tradition

This paper is an introduction to a study of what 4,000 Israelis had to say about their leisure, culture, and communication. In a national survey conducted during the spring of 1970, we gathered data on a large variety of cultural activities. With respect to each of them, an effort was made to measure both supply and demand. Thus, we know for cultural events taking place outside the home which events were advertised where, and we know who attends which activities. Likewise, we studied the cultural activities that take place inside the home, paying particular attention to the effect of the introduction of television, and to the fate of the book the newest and oldest media in Israel. We try to do this within two broader contexts. One is behavioural: using the method of time-budget analysis, we have reconstructed the way in which Israelis invest time, that most scarce of human resources, over the 24-hour period of a weekday, a Friday, and a Saturday. The other context is that of attitudes and values: we discuss the functions of cultural activities and communications within the framework of attitudes towards work, leisure, the Sabbath, and holidays, and more generally, in terms of the social and psychological 'needs' that are experienced as salient by Israeli Jews, in their several social roles.