God, Jews and the Media: Religion and Israel's Media

God, Jews and the Media: Religion and Israel's Media, by Yoel Cohen, Routledge Jewish Studies Series, 2012. 258 pp.Reviewed by Haim ShapiroSeveral years ago, Bar flan University held a symposium on religion and the media. As a newspaper reporter, I was curious as to what the panelists might have to say about the moral issues occasionally faced by journalists. For example, what did the Jewish sages have to say about the conflict between the public s right to know and the prohibition of lashon hara (gossip) ? How does one deal with the possibility of ruining someone's reputation or even endangering his or her life by reporting on something that was said or done ? I wondered if any of the journalists on the panel, some of them religiously observant, had ever consulted a rabbi on such issues.To my disappointment, the symposium quickly evolved into a discussion on the way in which the media portrays the Jewish settlers in the disputed territories, most of whom are identified with the national-religious movement. I then realized that this was what interested most of the audience, which clearly sided with the settlers.Yoel Cohen, a professor in the School of Communications at Ariel University, has delved into a vast array of issues relating to Jewish religious practice and the media, surveying not only the written press, radio, and television, but also internet coverage and the leaflets distributed on a weekly basis to worshippers at synagogues. He has surveyed the range of Israel's Jewish population: the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Hassidic and Lithuanian yeshiva circles, the modern Orthodox, the traditional and secular communities, and even the demographically small Conservative and Reform movements. Indeed, Cohen's study reveals that media coverage of "religion" in Israel is concerned, most often, with specific groups and the way they relate to one another. That is, theology per se is not considered particularly newsworthy.Considerable media attention, Cohen notes, is paid to the members of the Haredi community, both because they are picturesque, with their distinctive dress and lifestyle, and because of their political clout. When Shas, a Sephardic Haredi party, was organized to challenge the Ashkenazi Agudat Yisrael, which had hitherto claimed the entire Haredi vote, there was additional coverage. Later, when yet another Haredi party, Degel Hatorah, associated largely with the rationahst Lithuanian yeshivot came on the scene, there was even more material for journalists. Cohen reminds us of an interesting paradox: The rabbis who guided each of these political parties and were themselves a source of media interest remained almost entirely inaccessible to the press. The former Sephardic chief rabbi and spiritual mentor of Shas, Rabbi Ovadya Yosef, is an excellent example. In the absence of direct access, journalists would regularly cover his weekly Saturday night sermons, broadcast by satellite, and report on his more outrageous remarks.Another colorful figure, whom Cohen does not mention, was the late Rabbi Eliezer Schach, the aged mentor of Degel Hato rah, whose pronouncements were top news. In a 1990 Tel Aviv rally, he held the fate of the government in his hands while masses of black-garbed followers contrasted sharply with a small cluster of journalists who relied on an interpreter to translate Schachs Yiddish into Hebrew. And, while Cohen does to some degree discuss Habad, a more developed treatment of this movement s relations with the media would have been welcome.At the other end of the religious spectrum, one would have also hoped for an in-depth analysis of the role of Rabbi Uri Regev who, as head of the Reform Movement s Israel Religious Action Center, ran a well-oiled campaign on two fronts, in the courts and in the media, relating to a series of issues challenging the Orthodox hegemony over Israels religious life. Regev succeeded in doing this in spite of the fact that most Israeli journalists, even those covering the "religious" beat, knew even less about Reform Judaism than they did about the Haredim. …