'EHE POLITICAL WORLDS OF .IERUSALEM‘S PEOPLE: A Srudy of the Political Orientations and Cultural Backgrounds of Traditional, Transitional, and Modern Typos In Jerusalem Thesis for the» Degree of Ph. D. MICHIGAN .STATE UNIVERSITY Leonard J. Fain 1962 This is to certify that the thesis entitled The Political Worlds of Jerusalem's People: A Study of the Political Orientations and Cultural Backgrounds of Tradi- onalfi Transitional; and Modern Types in Jerusalem presented by Leonard J. F ein has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph . D. degree in Political Science Major professor Date May 15, 1962 0-169 ABSTRACT THE POLITICAL WORLDS OF jERUSALEM'S PEOPLE : A Study of the Political Orientations and Cultural Backgrounds of Traditional, Transitional, and Modern Types in Jerusalem by Leonard J. Fein Terms such as folk-urban, Gemeinschaft—Gesellschaft, and tradi— tional-modern are frequently used to distinguish different kinds of societies. Yet these terms also suggest different types of people, some rooted in tradi- tional ways, some turned toward modernity, and some in passage from one way of life to another. Intuitive appreciation of these differences has been supple— mented recently by the work of Daniel Lerner, who finds significant differences in the styles of life of traditionals, transitionals, and mode rns.] From evidence gathered in other contexts, it was expected that the three types identified by Lerner would differ sharply in their political attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. Israel, usually regarded as a relatively modern country, contains large numbers of people who come from various kinds of traditional back- grounds. At the same time, it is committed, culturally and politically, to modernity and democracy. To what extent is there homogeneity in political belief? To what extent are immigrants from different countries identified with different styles of life, as well as with different political orientations? How .‘ i ll may-g the cal Ix midlldl origins. slit lJllt‘l‘\'1L"U.> ~ Jerusalem malt-s. t t attainirnt, relagiw'n me: as traditional.» CHIN the first of 1hr»; (raid. In atltlllllill 1. m3 demography. L? r Klilt‘biliills \hL’l‘L” ilhlx't C efficacy. orientation . Digital commitment. Association if the dependent \a 1‘ 1-. satiation lollo‘.‘ .\ Ill Tl‘adlllonals To all ~. ~ ltltlll scales. Clo” ' M to mode rmt \' ’ [13m m: M. l“ . J I 4} lX dL‘t'omr Al is . Ti‘ailition.i’~ ’xla'm' “ l LUIJIIIQI'IJUIV‘W I k ‘V ‘ I WI dlllhorua n Leona rd ]. Fein deep are the cultural gaps within the society. how much do they overlap with national origins, and how significant are they for the world of politics? Interviews were conducted with a randomly selected sample of 16.3 Jerusalem males. On the basis of their orientations toward change, educational attainment, religious orthodoxy, and psychic mobility, respondents were class— ified as traditionals, transitionals, or modems. Fifty-three respondents fell into the first of these classificatory categories, and 56 each into the second and third. In addition to a number of other descriptive variables--media ccmsump- tion, demography, etc. --data were obtained on several aspects of political life. Questions were asked regarding sensitivity to civil liberties, sense of political efficacy, orientations to authoritarian leadership and to political parties, ideo— logical commitment, political interest and activity, and party preference. Association between the three- valued classificatory index and each of the dependent variables was measured by the chi-squa re test. In most. cases, association follows theoretical expectation, and is significant at the . 001 level. Traditionals were least sensitive to civil liberties, as measured by two different scales, and moderns most sensitive. Transitionals were much closer to modernity than to tradition, suggesting that the movement out of tradi— tion may be accompanied by a significantly increased appreciation of civil rights. Traditionals and modems we re also at opposite extremes with respect to authoritarianism, political efficacy, and political interest, with traditionals the most authoritarian, the least efficacious, and the least interested. But dif— Leona rd I. Fein ferences regarding Israel's pioneering ideology and rates of political activity were not significant. Explanations for the similarity of the three groups on these variables are suggested. Differences in the following of the varimis parties are also identified and explained. Each of the three groups is then examined in depth, in order to under— stand its composition and its cultural patterns. It is found that traditionals are either of the folk-sacred type, usually poorly educated immigrants from Africa and Asia, or of the prescriptive sacred type, in the case of the extremely orthodox European and Israeli. respondents. Transitionals are far more dif- ficult to analyze, for both theoretical and empirical reasons. But there is some evidence that the Israel-born among them are in an advanced state of transition, with European transitionals in the middle stage, and Afro—Asian immigrant transitionals closest to tradition. (Each of these constitutes roughly one-third of the transitional group.) Finally, moderns include a negligible number of Afro-Asians, a disproportionately large number of native Israelis, and a sizeable group of European immigrants. Sub-groups within each of the three basic categories are identified, and their political characteristics described. Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1958) . THE POLITICAL WORLDS OF JERUSALEM'S PEOPLE: A Study of the Political Orientations and Cultural Backgrounds of Traditional, Transitional, and Modern Types in Jerusalem Leona rd J. Fein A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Political Science 1962 f 9 Q; 23L ’— / c... .‘5 .- /‘/ If lid 3/5" .1: bx ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study would not have been done save for the gracious assistance and ready cooperation of many people, in both Israel and America, to whom I am deeply grateful and indebted. The Social Science Research Council provided the funds necessary to carry out the research through its Research Training Fellowship program. Professor S. N. Eisenstadt and Eric Cohen, of the Depart- ment of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, took time from their own pursuits to give me much-needed advice at the outset of my work, as did Mr. Haim Radai, then Deputy Director of the Ministry of Labor. Dr. Louis Guttman, Director of the Israel Institute for Applied Social Research, allowed me free access to the facilities and personnel of the Institute, and offered both advice and encouragement. I am especially grateful to him, and to Mr. Uzi Peled, whose assistance in the technical aspects of the field work was indispensible. At various stages in the planning of the research and in the analysis and reporting of the data, Professors Joseph LaPalomba ra, Joseph Schlesinger. and Charles Adrian, all of Michigan State University, shared their experience and critical acumen with me. Frank Sim's guidance through the thickets of statistical analysis helped me avoid much wasteful effort, and Hilda Jaffe's editorial assistance substan- tially lightened the burden of revision. ii Long before I planned this study, I was aware of my intellectual debt to Professor Frank Pinne r, Director of the Bureau of Social and Political Research at Michigan State University. It was only while working on it that I realized how great a debt it is. He reined me in when I became too heady, and urged me on when less promising pastures beckoned. I thank him for his time, his counsel, and his friendship. My wife did far more than tend the hearth; she knew that the re is a time to speak, and a time to refrain from speaking. When I sought encourage- ment, she provided it; when I preferred escape, she understood. For this, as for so much else, my thanks. CONTENTS ACK NOW LE DG E M E NTS LIST OF TABLES , INTRODUCTION Ch apte r I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. CONCEPTIONS THE INSTITUTIONAL SETTING PROCEDURES POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR THE WAY OF THE TRADITIONAL ‘ THE WORLD OF THE MODERN . BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE: THE TRANSITIONAL CONCLUSIONS APPENDIX . BIBLIOGRAPHY iv Page ii (1 30 I (12 . 178 LIST OF TABLES Table Pa ge( s) 1. Jewish Immigrants, by Continent of Birth . . . . . . . . . . . 32 2. Results of Parliamentary Elections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~11 3. Economic Status and Educational Attainment of Various Groups .. 43 --I7 4. Inter-Community Marriage in 1958 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 .5. Depletion of Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . so 6. Orientation Toward Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (11 -()2 7. Educational Attainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ()3 8. Media Consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 9. Religious Orthodoxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (15 -oo 10. Area of Origin and Age Group of Respondents . . . . . . . . . no 11. Leaders and Parties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68-69 12. Sensitivity to Civil Liberties (I) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 09-70 13. Sensitivity to Civil Liberties (II) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 14. Political Efficacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 13. Party Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 lo. Summed Score of Four Independent Variables . . . . . . . . . 75 17. Civil Liberties (I). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79-80 18. Civil Liberties (II) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81-83 19. Political Efficacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 20. Leaders and Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88-59 21. Ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 -94 22. Political Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9t) 23. Political Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 24. Party Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1 v Table 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. LIST OF TABLES - -Continued Demographic Data for Traditional Sub-Groups . Personal Happiness . Traditionals: Descriptive Data . Demographic Characteristics of Mode rns . Personal Happiness . Moderns: Descriptive Data Choice of Other Country . Demographic Characteristics of Transitionals . Comparison of Mean Scores of Transitionals to Traditionals and Moderns . Selected Descriptive Data for Traditionals, Transitionals, and Moderns . . vi Page(s) 109 112 INTRODUCTION The night before the wedding, we were invited to the home of the groom's father, where some thirty Yemenite men had gathered to honor the groom . On one side of the table, across from us, sat the four elders of the family, clad in the flowing robes which bespoke their adherence to the tradition they brought with them to Israel. The groom, a schoolteacher in his early thirties, sat with his father at the head of the table, looking sometimes proud, sometimes terrified. On the table were light refreshments-—brandy, unshelled peanuts, and sliced cucumbers. Musical leadership-~for it was in ancient song that honor was done-~came from our side of the table, where most of the younger men were grouped. All four of us--my wife and our two American journalist friends had come with me--felt somewhat uneasy about our presence. The invitation had come from the daughter of our neighborhood vegetable vendor, himself now seated across the table in his role as family elder. The others in the room were all strangers to us. We had hoped that there would be more people, that the room would be larger, so that we might be able to observe the rituals our- selves unobserved. Instead, we were given seats of honor to the left of the groom's father, plied with brandy, and thus transformed into participants rather \3 than onlookers . Yet we could not really be participants, not only because the language and the songs were unfamiliar, but also because of the constant aware- ness of our good fortune in having been invited and of how colorful a story this would make to tell our friends . So we sat, joining in toasts to the groom, trying to appear as natural in listening to the music as the others were in singing it. And it was worth it. Not that the music was especially well sung, for it was not, nor that we were hearing Yemenite music for the first time, for we were not. It was enchanting because this was the first time we had heard this music sung in a (relatively) natural setting, rather than as performed by more or less authentic professionals. The songs came alive, they had meaning. they were no longer esoteric folk music, just as the robes worn by the elders were no longer costumes, but clothes . These singers had a right to these songs. And the songs themselves conjured up visions of the incredible history of this two thousand year old community, visions which, by turning from the Western— clad young men at our side to the elders across the table, we saw embodied before us . I noticed that one of the singers was following the words in a book, evidently a collection of Yemenite songs . Intrigued at the thought‘of a book that had, no doubt, been passed from generation to generation for who knows how many years, or even centuries, that had in all probability been selected to make the trip to Israel at the expense of some more elemental necessity or perhaps even of some product of the silversmith's art for which the Yemenites are justly famed, I asked whether I might take a closer look. Its holder passed it on to me, and it was with a rare sense of excitement that I opened it. On the flyleaf, following the Hebrew title, appeared these words: A Collection of Yemenite Songs Edited and Published by The Hebrew Union College Cincinnati, Ohio 11 What began in amusing incongruity concluded in poignant conflict. The next evening we attended the wedding itself, in company with perhaps a thousand others . We arrived early at the huge hall where the ceremony was to take place. By now we felt a proprietary interest in the proceedings, and it was with delight that we found ourselves nodding to new friends of the previous evening. At one end of the hall was a table of elders, who now numbered over fifty. Despite the milling about, the elders remained seated, most of them silent, ignoring the commotion. At the other end, near the entrance, a three man combo (accordion, trumpet, drums) performed. Their repertoire consisted primarily of popular music, mostly American, some from Israel. I remember thinking to myself that this must simply be a prelude, and that with the beginning of the ceremony itself the players would shift to Yemenite melodies . The better part of an hour passed before all the guests arrived, were seated, and quieted down to await the entrance of the bride. When, at last. she began her entrance into the hall, the band, which had been playing all the while, quickly concluded "Has Anybody Seen My Gal?" and swung into an extra- loud version of the Mendelssohn Wedding March. Mynotion that the Western music was a mere prelude was evidently mistaken, and I now felt a quiet disappoint- ment, partly for the passing of an attractive traditional culture, partly that "my" Yemenite wedding was turning out to be just a wedding of Yemenites. The feeling came quickly, and before it took root, the table of elders, as if by signal, began singing the traditional Yemenite greeting to the bride. The audience, bewildered by the confusion of sound——for the band was still playing--remained silent. For a full thirty seconds, as I waited impatiently for the band members to demonstrate their discretion by deferring to the elders, the two groups strove against each other. In that brief period, culture conflict passed from a useful theoretical concept into a lived experience . Finally, inevitably, sadly, Western efficiency, embodied in the amplifying system the band was using emerged victorious, and the elders were silent once again . III Jerusalem is a city of incongruities . Its name means "City of Peace, yet it is divided into Jordanian and Israel sectors, with armed men guarding the border. The tallest building in Jewish Jerusalem is the Young Men's Christian Association . The two best restaurants serve kosher Chinese and Italian food. On Mount Zion, the reputed tomb of King David abuts the Dormition Abbey, traditional site of the Assumption of Mary. Everywhere new touches old in sometimes charming, sometimes absurd patterns. But the heart of Jerusalem's incongruity is its people. They come from over one hundred different countries of the world. The modest sample of a hundred and sixty-five cases on which this study is based includes people from Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Morocco, Tunisia, Iraq, Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, China, and India, as well as native Israelis. Statistical summaries of national origin reflect the more obvious and more significant cultural diversity. In Mea She'Arim, the ultra -orthodox quarter, the eighteenth century Polish slittil is reconstituted. The Yemenite community brought with it, and still maintains to some degree, a culture that has known little change in two thousand years . From these extremes, one passes through dozens of cultural hybrids before arriving at the several "modern" groupings -- Central European bureaucrats and teachers, North African and Israel-born Levantines, Eastern European ideologues, Anglo-Saxon and Israel-born experts in market research and the mass media. What follows is a study of the political interests and attitudes which characterize Jerusalem's population. As will be seen, those interests and attitudes are closely related to socio-cultural differences . Those for whom tradition--whether in the form of ritual, of ideology, or of identification with non-literate, neophobic cultures-~is of supreme importance differ in their approaches to politics from those who are learning (or have already learned) to live with change. The Yemenite elders are political animals of a different order from the members of the combo, who in turn differ from the wedding guests whose loyalties, during the long half-minute of culture conflict, were divided. The nature of the differences, and the reasons for them, are described and explained in the following chapters. Cl lAPTER I CONCEPTIONS Tradition and modernity Social historians have used a dazzling and often bewildering variety of terms to type social entities: Gemeinschaft -Gesellschaft, folk-urban, sacred— secular, community-society, culture-civilization, particularistic~universal— istic, and traditional-modern are among the more familiar. Recently, econo- mists specializing in the Study of economic development have added undeveloped, under-developed, developing, backward, industrial, developed, Western, and advanced to the list. In some cases the terms are interchangeable; in others, meaningful differentiation is or can be made. Among all of them, however, there are large areas of overlap. Whatever the particular emphasis, the polar extremities share characteristics which correspond to the felt difference between what, in a less value -free time, were called primitive and civilized. The former, typically, is described as small, isolated, non-literate, homo~ geneous, and economically independent; it has a simple technology and a. strong sense of solidarity; there is no reflection, criticism, or experimentation; kin- ship is central, behavior is spontaneous, and traditional acts and objects , l are not questioned . Modern society, on the other hand, is characterized by . . . a comparatively high degree of urbanization, widespread lite racy, comparatively high per capita income, extensive geo- le. Robert Redfield, "The Folk Society, " Amerigan Journal‘okffiSocio- logy, LII (January, 1947), pp. 293-308. 6 \l graphical and social mobility, a relatively high degree of commerciali- zation and industrialization of the economy, an extensive and penetra- tive network of mass communications media, and, in general, by wide- spread participation and involvement by members of the society in modern social and economic processes .1 The several types noted above, and their accompanying definitions, apply to social entities. Yet, explicitly or implictly, they also describe psychological characteristics of individuals . In most cases, the assumption seems to be that traditional societies contain more "traditional" people than do modern societies, where "modern" people are more prevalent. Yet, "in every primitive band or tribe there is civilization; in every city, there is folk society ."2 Clearly, then, one cannot simply say that traditional people are people who live in traditional societies . This not only begs the question, but is, as Redfield implies and as we shall demonstrate, not true. What, then, are the psychological characteristics implied by the descriptions and terms we have noted? llow, if not by the community in which they live, are we to distinguish between mode ms and traditionals? Surely some subtler and surer distinction is possible than geographic location alone . The answer, we submit, is to be sought not at the social level, where concepts such 1Gabriel Almond and James S . Coleman, The Politics of the I‘DE‘yelopin’g Areas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 532. 2Robert Redfield, "The Natural History of Folk Society, " §9£ELEQ§EEPL XXXI (March, 1953), p. 225. At what point these alien factors convert tribes into civilizations or (if possible) cities into folk societies is a moot question, and of little concern in the present context. Our concern is with traditionalism and modernity as these terms apply to individuals and, for the time being, that concern enables us to avoid (or evade) the question of how the number of individuals of either type determines the classification of the society as a whole. ' 8 as size and isolation are relevant, but at that of the individual, in attitudes and attributes . Attitudes . --The most commonly noted attitudes which distinguish trad: itionals from moderns are those which relate to change. Thus, One of the most pervasive carry-over effects of the traditional society is the persistent tendency to inhibit individual initiative, a perpetuation of attitudes that resist innovation in any form .1 Or, "One of the main criteria of the identity of the sacred . . . is the extent to which reluctance to change may manifest itself, " while "a secular society 2 H is one in which resistance to change is at a minimum. . . . The virtue of this distinction is that it is not time- or culture-bound . In all times and in all places, he who is ready to accept new ways at the expense of old differs from him who clings to the paths of his fathers . Because, in our time, change has been institutionalized--through the quickened pace of discovery and invention--most of us come to the distinction between old and new with a marked bias in favor of the new. The "fresh" and "novel" is preferred to the .— 1Max F . Millikan and Donald L. M. Blackmer (eds.), The~lgngrging i_\'atign_§ (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961), p. 24. 2)’I‘he first quotation is from Howard Becker, "Commentary on Value- System Terminology, " Howard Becker and Harry Elmer Barnes, Social‘Thought From Lore to nggngthew York: Dover, 1961), II, vii; the second is from Vol. I, p. ()7. i\'ote, however, Becker's caveat: "Not every unwillingness or inability to change comes under the sacred heading; there may be social arrangements, such as demonstrably efficient work routines, so thoroughly expedient in attaining their ends that change to less expedient methods is resisted. Change as such, in other words, is not viewed with disapproval; it is only the inexpedient change that is opposed . . . The basic point is that there is none of that 'certain emotionalized reluctance to change' that is so definitely an essential of the sacred. . . ." (Becker, "Commentary on Value-System Terminology, " 131.33., pp. vi and vii.) ill. luil.‘ v .I lill: ti V "stale" and "old-fashioned.’ But the distinction itself implies no such value preference. It says merely that it is useful to distinguish between neophobia and neophilia, and that the first is characteristic of the traditional while the second characterizes modern man . Attributes. --It is conventional to include rates of literacy, urbanization, and media consumption in indices of modernity. There can be three different reasons for their inclusion. The first, and simplest, is that there is generally a high degree of association between these three variables and other measures of modernity, such as labor force mobility and industrial expansion. The second is that mass education, the move to the cities, and the spread of the mass media are dominant characteristics of the twentieth century. The third, and the most significant to our discussion, is that all three are agents of change. The mass media-—by describing other worlds, education--by challenging the individual with new ideas, and urbanization-~by confronting him with diversity, together widen personal horizons and force an awareness of alien habits and standards . In so doing, they presumably help to convert neophobes into neophiles . The schools and the media, especially, not only acquaint the individual with contemporary styles of life-~that hasalways been their function-— but provide him with that non-constrictive future orientation which is the modern norm. Formal education, traditionally intended to "prepare the young person to take his place in the adult community" comes to be designed to "prepare the young person to take his place in an ever—changing world, in the world of 1 tomorrow.’ Ancient mythology and national history are joined by courses in contemporary civilizations and space technology. The media describe not only 10 the folk heroes of the past, but also the population explosion, the Westerni- zation of Japan, the shape of tomorrow's consumer products--in short, they speak of diversity and change . It was not-~nor is it--always so. Both schools and media can be, and are, used for the transmission of sacred, rather than secular, values. To assume that any educated person will be neophilic is to presuppose, mistakenly, that all educational systems have the same goals, or operate in the same cultural climate. To assume that the mass media necessarily lead to an acceptance of change is to presuppose, mistakenly, that they cannot be controlled to other ends. Where, however, these agents are yea—sayers of change, we may expect those who are exposed to them to move toward neophilia, and hence, in our terms. toward modernity. Psychic mobility. --If education and media consumption are not. of themselves, measures of modernity, but are only significant insofar as they affect attitudes toward change, then those attitudes provide our one direct measure of modernity. An additional differentiating variable, psychic mobility. has, however, been suggested by both Howard Becker and Daniel Lerner. Becker, in describing the foundations of sac red society, stresses three kinds of isolation: vicinal, social, and mental. The first two are attributes of societies and are, therefore, only of tangential relevance here. The third, however, is obviously a personality characteristic and, as such, demands our attention. Mental mobility is nowhere clearly defined by Becker, but he does provide some clues to :its meaning. Thus, it is . . . a correlate of that form of social change in which secularization is strikingly manifest, and . . . involves, 11 among other things, mental mutability, release of inhibitions and energies, . . . rationalism, and attitudinal plasticity that I sometimes reaches the extreme of personality disorganization. And, . . as a consequence of vicinal isolation all preliterates are marked by extreme mental immobility, by unwillingness or inability, or both, to change their ways of acting and thinking. This does not mean that they are inherently backward or con— servative; it merely means that long isolation has permitted the growth of fixed habits that lead to great resistance to change .2 From these citations, it would appear that Becker uses mental mobility to refer to what we have called attitude toward change . That something deeper is intended, however, is clear from his references to the similarity of mental . . . . . . , . . . . 3 immobility and mobility to Tonnies essential w111 and arbitrary Will, to ' . 4 . ' . . Pareto s lions and foxes, to Sorokin 5 growth of mental plast1c1ty and versa- tility. At issue 1s a personality characteristic, rather than a (more super- ficial) attitudinal orientation. Open-mindedness, neophilia, and liberalism may all correlate with psychic mobility; but correlation is not to be confused with identity. The notion that movement from old to new involves a personality adjustment should not be startling. As far back as Cicero, we find the follow- ing observation: 1H. Becker and H. E. Barnes, 9p.._1:i_t., l, 141. 2112.121, 1, 9- 311119., 11, 768. 411319., 111, 1022. 511319.,111, 1050-57. l2 Maritime cities are . . . exposed to corrupt influences, and revolutions of manners . Their civilization is more or less adulterated by new language and customs, and they import not only foreign merchandise, but also foreign fashions, which allow not fixation or consolidation of the institutions of such cities . Those who inhabit these maritime towns do not remain in their native place, but are urged far from their homes by winged hope and speculation . And even when they do not desert their count1‘1y in person, their-minds are always expatiating and voyaging round the wo r19.r ‘ From Cicero's "minds . . . voyaging round the world" we move easily to Lerner's theory of psychic mobility. Lerner sees the movement from the old ways to the new as occasioned, in the first instance, by the development of physical and social mobility. In a mobile society, "people come to see their future as manipulable rather than ordained and their personal prospects in terms of achievement rather than heritage."2 "Whereas traditional man tended to reject innovation by saying 'It has never been thus,’ the contemporary Westerner is more likely to ask 'Does it work’?’ and try the new way without further ado."3 More is implied here than a shift in attitudinal posture: Whereas the isolate communities of traditional society functioned well on the basis of a highly constrictive personality, the inter- dependent sectors of modern society require widespread par— ticipation. This in turn requires an expansive and adaptive self— system, ready to incorporate new roles and to identify personal values with public issues . This is why modernization of any society has involved the great characterological transformation we call psychic mobility.4 lCicero The Republic, 1, 207, quoted in Becker and Barnes, op. cit., I, 173, emphasis added. 2Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe: The F ree Press, 1958), p. 48. 311119., p. 49. 411319., p. 51. 13 What is the substance of this "characterological transformation?" Empathy, the mechanism through which psychic mobility operates, is an "autonomous personality variable, " defined as the capacity "to see oneself in the other . ' o . 1' 1 _ o n n . 3‘ - 1 ' 1. ‘- . . fellow s Situation. Modern soc1ety is participant soc1ety, and participation requires the ability to incorporate and identify with a large variety of roles alien to the individual experience. The empathic person " . . . 'sees' things 1 that others do not see, 'lives in a world populated by imaginings alien to the o a 9'2 U I 'V constrictive world of the others . Compare, for example, Cicero s And even when they do not desert their country in person, their minds are always expatiating and voyaging round the world" to Lerner's observation that transition proceeds " . . . as more and more individuals take leave of the constrictive traditional universe and nudge their psyche toward the expansive I '\ new land of heart's desire .' To test for empathy, Lerner asks several projective questions such as "If you were put in charge of a radio station, what kinds of programs would you like to put on?" "Suppose you were made head of the government. What are some of the things you would do?" and "If for some reason you could not live . . . .7'14 . . in our country, what other country would you choose to live in. Ability to answer these (and similar) questions without difficulty earns the respondent an 1113131., p. 50; we leave to more leisurely days a discussion of whether Lerner's test of empathy is properly a measure of empathy rather than role- taking ability. 212111., p. 72. 319.19- 4 1111(1. , Appendix A (not numbered). l4 empathic rating; answers such as "God forbid .'" or "I would never dream of such a thing" mark him as lacking empathy. Not surprisingly, empathy so measured correlates highly with education, socio—economic status, urbanism, and media consumption . Are we entitled, however, to maintain that Walter Mitty is strictly modern, even Weste rn? Might it not be that the member of a preliterate tribe can empathize with his tribal chief or folk heroes, and that it is simply unfair to expect him to empathize with roles totally outside his range of experience? Empathy, in this View, requires awareness of, and ideally also salience of, the roles in question. Modern man would presumably be as little able to imagine himself in the role of village shepherd as traditional man to imagine himself an industrial magnate . This line of criticism neglects at least two aspects of psychic mobility (or empathy) which save it from the cultural bias of which (as Lerner uses it) it is accused. First, modern man is theoretically able to identify with roles less related to his own experience than is traditional man. He may be a news— paper reader, but has probably never met a newspaper editor-~yet he is able to imagine what it would be like to be one . The traditional, on the other hand, is likely restricted to empathizing with the incumbents of various directly observable roles, rather than with the roles themselves . His capacity to abstract to the sophistication of "role-requirements" is limited. Moreover. because modern society is, in Lerner's view, participant society, the range of roles available to the modern is much larger. Even if his ability to empathize were itself no greater than the traditional's, his less constricted world provides it much greater scope. 15 To argue that: it is unfair to assess the psychic mobility of the traditional by asking him to empathize with modern roles such as those of news- paper editor or prime minister begs the question . It is precisely the ability to identify with such diverse modern roles that identifies the modern. However, it is now clear that we are measuring not "pure" empathy but, at least so long as Lerner's tests are used, empathy with modern roles-~and elite roles at that. While it may be true, as we argue above, that these are more diverse and more abstract than the traditional could grasp, Lerner's evidence does not, and cannot, so demonstrate. His point--and ours, since we use his measures--must be limited to hold that moderns are more able to identify with modern elite roles than are traditionals. Stated somewhat more significantly, one fruitful way of distinguishing traditionals from moderns is to see which people are best able to empathize with the roles and situations that characterize modern, participant society. Sig-117110111. -—The "pure" traditional-~rural, illiterate, low in media consumption, neophobic, and psychically immobile-~is an extreme construct, as is his opposite, the "pure" modern. Within the area bracketed by these extremes various combinations are possible. These combinations--their sub- stance and their relative frequency-~illuminate the process of cultural transition . To discuss them now would be to anticipate the results of our empirical inquiry. Instead, we turn our attention to several theoretical sub-types of special importance . The typology presented here is derived from the sacred-secular dis - tinction of Howard Becker; it is helpful to begin by examining the nature of that lb distinction . A sac red society is one that elicits from or imparts to its members, by means of sociation, unwillingness and/or inability to respond to the culturally new as the new is defined by those members in terms of the society's existing culture . . . A -_~_--_._.—._'_- _._._ ._..-......_- network of sociation that develops, among the personalities weaving and woven by it, a high degree of resistance to change, particularly in their social order, is a sacred society. A secular society is one that elicits from or imparts to its members, by means of sociation, willingness and ability to respond to the culturally new as the new is defined by those members in terms of the society's existing culture . . . A network of sociation that develops, among the personalities weaving and woven by it, a high degree of readiness and capacity to change, particularly in their social order, is a secular society.1 H Put somewhat differently, . . .. a society that incorporates and sustains an impermeable value system is sacred; one that embodies a permeable value system is secular." Becker proceeds to identify two kinds of sacred, and two kinds of secular societies. The first is the folk-sacred, which embodies those character- istics generally assocmted With preliterate cultures. The second is the prescriptive~sacred, and it may occur in quite different contexts . It is found where "a definite body of dogma calls forth, sets up, or maintains a totalitarian o . '94 . . . . . kind of soc1a1 structure . Here the unifying dogma originates at the top rather than out of the cultural background of the society. As a result, it is theoreti- 1Howard Becker, Through Values to Social _1nterpretation (Durham: Duke University Press, 1950), pp. 252-53. 211119 ., p. 253. 321222 p- 6. 4Becker, Tl1go1t1gl1yalues . . ., p. 254. l7 cally quite possible to locate a prescribed—sacred system which embodies no "sacred people Indeed, there may be a high level of literacy and urbanization, and the media may be popular instruments of social control. Neophilia and mental mobility are (more or less successfully) eschewed by the regime. The sanctioned rationality suppresses opposing doctrine, and inculcates its own. Becker cites Calvin's Geneva and Hitler's Germany (the latter by intention, at least) as examples of prescriptive sacred societies . "Prescription may arise in such a way that it does little more than underscore traditions ."1 This occurs when there is a gradual systematization and incorporation of older concepts and creeds . To the extent that a prescribed society is successful in its internal endeavors, there emerges what may be called a "folk-prescribed" type. Here the formal dogma becomes a way of life . And here are found those who are prepared to do battle with the new ways, for they violate the Truth. The relevance of this type to our own discussion is made clear in a later section on the orthodox Jews of Jerusalem. In contrast to the sacred are the two types of secular societies, the principled and the normless . At its extreme, the normless-secular is a logical impossibility, for " . . . the bonds that make a collection of mere human beings into a society--that is, into a coherent, continuing, self-perpetuative, and relatively self-contained social unity-~are basically of a sacred character." Hence no society can be completely secular; it is the sacred bonds that make Society possible. As those bonds are loosened, we approach pure normlessness . 1 113111., p. 64. 2111i_d., p. 07. 4.. 18 Between the sac red and the normless-secular, however, is found the principled- secular, where " . . . the dislike of the new, which is characteristic of extremely sacred societies, may not be strongly in evidence; but the . . . liking for the new, which runs rampant in normless secular societies is held in check. The product of the pr1nc1ple d secular-soc1ety, for whom some things are sacred, is often ideologically, though not dogmatically, committed; he is mentally mobile, but not completely so. The product of the normless— secular society, for whom nothing is sacred, is unsocialized; his mental mobility is so great that he is incapable of playing any social role with consistency. He is as much the victim of transition as the end product of modernization, for it is the lack of definition in the transitional situation that has left him personally undefined. Here is the Levantine, who apes Western activities but knows nothing of Western or any other values . These four theoretical types do not exhaust the possible positions along the continuum from tradition to modernity. Less extreme locations, and more ambivalent ones, are logically possible. Becker does discuss, in some detail, a number of other theoretical types, especially those generated by rapid social 2 . . . . change. We shall, as the need arises in the course of interpreting our data, return to his observations . For the present, we rest the discussion and turn to an examination of the probable political correlates of tradition and modernity. 111119., p. 255. 211119., pp. 78-91; see also 1111111, pp. I48~49. Political interests and attitudes Our concern thus far has been to put forward some general principles which might serve to locate people along a traditional-modern continuum. We now ask whether the suggested principles enable us to predict individual response to the world of politics . If socio-psychological traditionalism and modernity do, indeed, impinge upon political interests and attitudes, where can that influence be most clearly seen, and what is its substance? The humanistic view Although scant attention has been paid these specific questions, the more general debate on the impact of technological civilization on the individual has produced vast quantities of opinion and analysis . No other topic has been of equal concern to humanists and social scientists during the last century. The general theme has been a lamentation over the loss of community. Security, sociability, intimacy, so marked in the simple societies of the past, have been replaced by alienation, criSis, and egoism . The primary group, the family, social ritual, have been crushed by the "fruits" of civilization: atomization, apathy, and social chaos . The bright hopes of an earlier age, and the. honest life of the ancients, give way to the sterility of 11gc11\£\113WoIl11 . Madison Avenue's "Wonderful World of Tomorrow" in truth breeds today's Slums, broken homes, escape from freedom . The enormous and cancerous cities in which. we live, the size and impersonality of the offices and factories in which we work, the intimate exposure to the prevailing culture from which we cannot escape, the ceaseless refashioning of the 'standards' by which our lives are self-evaluated, the very 'complexity' of life before which .1 20 we experience a sinking impotence-~these are . . . characteristics of modern existence whose source can be traced in large part to the environment which science and technics create in our midst.1 Or, again, In the monstrous confusion of modern life, only thinly disguised by the reliable functioning of the economic and state apparatus, the individual clings desparately to the collectivity. The little society in which he was embedded cannot help him; only the great collecti- vities, so he thinks, can do that, and he is all too willing to let himself be deprived of personal responsibility: he only wants to obey. And the most valuable of all goods--11fe between man and mam-gets lost in the process: autonomous relationships become meaningless, personal relationships wither, and the very spirit: of man hires itself out as a functionary . . . Just as his degenerate technology is causing man to lose the feel of good work and propo rtion. so the degrading social life he leads is causing him to lose the feeling of community--precisely when he is so full of the illusion of living in perfect devotion to his community. 2 Those who resist turn to psychoanalysis, to suburbia, to existentialism. to home workshops or summer camping; those who succumb become the organi - zation men, mass men, conformists . However they react, they have been deeply affected by the onrush of technology. Curiously, the gloomy portrait of modern society which emerges from so much of the thinking on the subject is ignored when we consider the needs of the underdeveloped nations . Here we emphasize the happy consequences of industrialization: adequate shelter, diet, clothing; reasonable work loads, Sufficient leisure, longer life-span; more time for cultural development, more money for medical care, more sense of mastery over nature. The ugly monster 1Robert L. Heilbronner, '_I‘_l1e_F1ittire as History (New York: Grove, 1960), p. 72. 2Martin Buber, "In the Midst of Crisis, " The W_1fi_t9_1_1g1s_(11;_i)_/1a_,rt_i11991111111;, ed. Will Herberg(New York: Meridian, 1956), p. 120. 21 spawned by industrialization in its rapacious youth is now joined by the lovely child of its mellow middle-years . These contrasting views of what technology has done and can do are not properly different views at all; they emphasize different potentialities of a process few dispute. In part, the implicit difference is over the question of whether economic development is worth the cost in social disorganization. Because to maintain that its price is too high involves saying to the impoverished peasants of less developed societies that they are really better off than they think, or perhaps even than we are, few adopt this course. Only the perverse or the ignorant, who insist on seeing Eden in every account of pre-industrial society, can honestly lament the passage of a time when "labor was viewed as a creative activity" and "man was close to nature." The rustic peasant, the happy fisherman, the roving gypsy, are exotic fictions; their demise, with few exceptions, has meant the end of a short life of backbreaking toil, lacking in the most elemental necessities . However, even a sober and unromanticized view of the past suggests a decrease . . in the rewards of social solidarity, stability, ritual, companion- Ship, soc1ability, and security of status . This is what is emphasized by most Social critics, even if they reccgnize the countervailing humanizing effects of technology. The good life at the physical level is supplemented by the empty life at the cultural and the alienated at the psychological. The forces of --_\._... H 1Robert A. Dahl and Charles E . Lindblom, Politics. Economh‘s, Ewire (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953), p. 220. 22 rationality have gained a pyrrhic victory, as a new kind of irrationality. disruptive and degrading, takes hold. From this emerges, by implication at least, a somber protrait of modern political man. What better material for the demagogue, the extremist, the man on horseback of any ideology, than the frightened, lonely, conforming, modern man? If intolerance is a function of anxiety, frustration, and depriva- tion,what hopes can we hold out for the humane values in a technological society?1 "We are living in a time of massive popular counter-revolution against: liberal democracy. It is a reaction of the failure of the West to cope with the miseries and anxieties of the Twentieth Century.'" Man, increasingly confused, even terrified, 110pelessly frustrated, will seek the simple, the easily-grasped. Rejection of ambiguity means rejection of democratic morality, which is based on acceptance of compromise and tolerance of deviation. And so we have come full circle. The secular society of this century carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction for, at least when joined to technology, it forces us to search desperately for the sacred. Either we Sanctify our own institutions--which is simple, but not very satisfying-~01: we seek to turn backwards, to recapture the legendary past--which is possibly Satisfying, but not easily done. Whatever the reaction, man's political 1See Bruno Bettleheim and Morris Janowitz, "Ethnic Intolerance: A I:unction of Social and Personal Control," American Journal of Sociology, LV (1949), pp. 137-45. 2Walter Lippmann, The Public Philosophy (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1955), p. 63. 23 character is clear: at best, reactionary, cynical, suspicious; at worst, authoritarian, intolerant, dogmatic --or completely withdrawn. In this view, then, neither traditional nor modern man fare well when confronted by the requirements of democracy; the former is too bound by tradition, the latter too liberated from it. The most valued type occurs only at the latter stages of transition, before the full psychic impact of modernizatimi has been realized. But this sounds a familiar chord: is it not the normless — secular society which is decried, and the principled-secular which is valued? The preceding paragraphs have assumed an equation between modernity and industrialization, an equation appropriate to our age . But the definition of modernity introduced earlier has no such temporal boundaries . And if we seek to determine the relationship of the elements of that definition--orientation toward change; education, media consumption, and urbanism because they affect that orientation; psychic mobility, because it may have an independent impact--to political beliefs and values, there is abundant previous evidence on which we may rely. —h -. 1However, what are usually offered as psychological explanations for Political acts or attitudes are often the results of inferences made from socio— 1ogical data. The procedure is to relate the act (or attitude) to a general Sociological category, and then " . . . to speculate about the possible psygflqlogi; 23: reasons why members of the particular social category posses the opinions they do." (Maurice Farber, "Toward a Psychology of Political Behavior," Public glimon Quarterly, XXIV [Fall, 1960], p. 459) Because this is so, there isfim Very little direct evidence on the relationship of general attitudes or orienta- tions (such as those toward change) and specifically political attitudes (such as those toward political parties). On the other hand, there is a great deal of evidence on the relationship of the attributes introduced above, and especially of education, to political values. 24 The political view Edi1ga11o_l1,--'Flie prevailing view of the relationship of education to political beliefs is summarized by Lipset: Education presumably broadens man's outlook, enables him to understand the need for norms of tolerance, restrains him from adhering to extremist doctrines, and increases his capacity to make rational electoral choices . Data gathered by public opinion research agencies which have questioned people in different countries about their beliefs on tolerance for the opposition, their attitudes toward ethnic or racial minorities, and their feelings for multi-party as against one-party systems have showed that the most important single factor differentiat— ing those giving democratic responses from the others has been education. The higher one's education, the more likely one is to believe in democratic values and support democratic practices .1 Since tolerance is widely regarded as a critical political value, Stouffer's findings in Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties are of Special interest. Noting that "few findings of this study are more important," he presents the following table: . . . a Percentage Distribution of Scores on Scale of Tolerance Less In Mo re Total Nunibe r Tolerant Between Tolerant of Cases College Graduates 5% 29% o 9;, 1009:, 308 Some College 9 38 53 100 319 High School Graduates 12 46 42 100 768 Some High School 17 54 29 100 576 Grade School 22 62 16 100 792 “L a .. . . . . . . Samuel Stoulfe r, Communism, Conformity. and C1V1l Liberties (New York: Doubleday, 1955), p.90. - 1Seymour M. Lipset, PQHQEEELME‘D (New York: Doubleday, 1960), p. 56. w _. ‘ _ fi- . _ ..- .. . 25 Stouffer concludes--a conclusion particularly interesting in the light of the discussion in the preceding section-~that great social, economic, and technological forces are operating slowly and imperceptibly on the side of spreading tolerance . The rising level of education and the accompanying decline ill authori- tarian child-rearing practices increase independence of thought and respect for others whose ideas are different.1 Campbell and his associates find, in The American Voter, that educa- tion correlates significantly with level of political information, conceptualization of information, political partiCipation, interest, and involvement. They are substantially less certain of the connection between education and authorita rian— ism, and are critical of those findings in The Authoritarian Personality which indicate a low, but statistically significant, relationship between education and , 3 . . . . ethnocentrism. Hyman, however, Cites ev1dence that tends to confirm this . . 4 5 . relationship, as does K0 rnhauser. Thus, while the nature of the education may influence the values it produces, there seems to be little doubt that education not only differentiates between traditionals and moderns, but lipiu” p. 236. 2Angus Campbell et al. , The American Voter (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1960), pp. 475-81. 31251., pp. 5512-15; the reference is to T. W. Adorno and associates, (New York: Harper, 1950), pp. 285-88.. 4Herbert Hyman, Political Socialization. (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1959), p. 133. 5Arthur Kornhauser, A. J. Mayer, and H..L. Sheppard, MEI] Labor XOJES_(NCW York: University Books, 1956), pp. 216 ff. ass _ _ 20 affects political behavior, in its broadest sense, as well. Ul‘banism . "Evidence as to the association of urbanism and political attitudes is also abundant, as would be expected: "The city is . . . a state of mind, a body of customs and traditions, and of organized altitudes and l o v.2 . . n < - sentiments. The Ame rlcan Voter reports a high correlation of urbanism and political involvement, including party identification and support.‘ Lipsct cites studies in Germany, Great Britain, Japan, and the United States \VhiCh show that rural populations (as well as the lower strata of the urban \vorking class) are more authoritarian, less concerned with or committed to civil rights, and more favorable to a one-party or no-pa rty system . He holds that . . . as all public opinion surveys show, the rural population. both farmers and laborers, tends to oppose civil liberties and multi-party systems more than any other occupational group. Election surveys indicate that farm owners have been among the strongest supporters of fascist parties, while farm workers, poor farmers, and share -croppers have given even stronger lThe reader may be somewhat distressed by the implication that tradi - tionals are uneducated. This is obviously not so, yet the qualitative distinction bGtween the generalized and undifferentiated educational system of the pure traditional society and the specific and highly formal system of the modem, and the theoretical relationship of the latter type with attitudes toward change, pro— vide the excuse for using education as a distinguishing characteristic . He who is sensitive to this usage should reat "formal, secular education" wherever we use the shorthand "education." 2Robert Park, IlleWCEy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925), D . 1 . 3Campbell 9331,-” o_p‘._c;ift_., pp. 410-25. 493935.. pp. 102-103. 27 backing to the Communists than has the rest of labor in countries like Italy, France. and India.-1 Stouffer finds farmers or farm workers to be less tolerant both of civil liberties issues and of non -conformists than city people. He explains the difference thus: There is something about life in a small community that makes it less hospitable to divergent opinions than is the case in our urban centers. In the anonymity of city life it is much easier for deviant behavior to flourish than in the goldfish bowl of a small community. In the large community there are sometimes so many goldfish that nobody bothers to look at them . In the small town a lone exotic specimen can be viewed with careful, critical, and occasionally devastating attention . 2 Media consumption. "All voting studies show that increasing media consumption is associated with an increase in political participation and . 3 . . . interest. Riesman suggests that the media develop attitudes of tolerance toward everything, including politics, and Stoulfer concludes that tolerance is increased "by the magic of our ever more powerful media of communica- IDES-r p. 112. 293”ch p. 130; An alternative explanation, made by Friedrich and Cited by Lipset, is that " . . . agricultural groups are more emotionally nationa— 1iStic and potentially authoritarian politically because of the fact that they are mOre isolated from meeting people who are different than are urban dwellers. (Lipset, op. cit. , pp. 112- 13) This explanation seems to be getting at the under- lying psychic mobility which may be, in part, a function of exposure to diversity. and hence of urbanism. Sée, e.g., Bernard Berelson, yoting_(Chicago: University of Chicago PI'ess, 1954), passini, or Campbell et al., op. cit., passim. 4David Riesman, _The Lonely Crowd (New York: Anchor Books, 1952), PD- 222-38. l tions . Orientations toward change. --The absence of direct studies in this ~~.M W area forces us to rely on implication and inference . We begin with the observa- tion that neophobia is associated With low soc10 —economic status. Low socio- . . . . . . , 3 economic status is, in turn, assoc1ated thh apathy, intolerance, and the like. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that orientation toward change will operate on political behavior in much the same manner as the attributes discussed above. Let it be stressed here that orientation toward change is not simply a disguised term for substantive political conservatism. Change is here very broadly defined and has no specific political connotations. In fact, the conven- tional. association between economic conservatism and high socio -economic Status suggests that the economic conservative may be more, rather than less. neophilic than the economic liberal. Psychic mobility. --It will hardly come as a surprise that what evidence there is concerning the relationship of psychic mobility to political beliefs follows much the same pattern. Lipset maintains that ”greater suggestibility, absence of a sense of past and future (lack of a prolonged time perspective}, inability to take a complex view, greater difficulty in abstracting from concrete 10p. cit., p. 236; The cited studies all show that, despite their high inter- relationship, each of the three attributes-~education, urbanism, and media con— sumption-~exercises an independent effect upon political behavior. In other words, even when any two are held constant, the third remains significant. 2Sec e.g. , Campbell £31., giggly, pp. 209— 11: Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy(Boston: Beacon, 1961), pp. 141—170; Herbert McClosky, *— "Conservatism and Personality, " {mLerigall Political ScigiLcejg1yiel‘g LII (.19.;8i.pp. 27 43.. ‘bpeitn passim . 29 experience, and lack of imagination" are all part "of the complex psychologi- ~ s v u n v.1 u a o cal baSis ot authoritarianism. Too, the same inferences that were drawn in the preceding paragraphs are equally valid here . There is no need to belabor the point. But a major caveat must be entered. In discussing Lerner's use of the empathy variable, Lipset has this to say: Whether this psychological characteristic results in a predis- position toward democracy (implying a willingness to accept the viewpoint of others) or is rather associated with the antidemocratic tendencies of a "mass society" type of personality (implying the lack of any personal values rooted in rewarding participation) is an open question. Possibly empathy (a more or less "cosmopolitan" outlook) is a general personality characteristic of modern societies, with other special conditions determining whether or not it has the social consequence of tolerance and democratic attitudes, or root- lessness and anomie. And so, once more, we return to the principled secular vs . the normless secular. Our theory holds,with Becker and Lerner, only that psychic mobility-—or, more. specifically, empathy with modern elite roles--is an essential differentiating characteristic between traditionals and modern s. But, as Lipset hints, it may lead either to tolerance or to anomie. The "other special conditions" which determine its results would, if our theory holds, be the presence or absence of the Sacred, the strength of social norms . 1 fluid, p. 115. 21mg, p. 60 n. - _.__- Cl lAPTliR 11 T1 lL‘ INSTITLTIONAL S lCTTINC From voluntarism to statism m-- - .—-——.—- H--—- ’-—‘ --— ._—-—.---. v -— With the achievement of independence in 1948, two revolutions occurred in Israel, both of which radically transformed the society that had existed in pre -independence Palestine. Mass immigration commenced, and a State came into being. To understand the nature and magnitude of the transformation, some familiarity with the Yishuv (as the Jewish community in Palestine was called) is required. Zionism was only in part a movement seeking political autonomy for the Jewish people. It was also profoundly concerned with generating a cultural renaissance and effecting something of a social revolution. Because of its commitment to a comprehensive weltanschauung, the Yishuv displayed cha racter- istics unique in immigrant societies . Eisenstadt describes them as follows: (1) Strong neutralization of the immigrants' cultural and social background. (2) Almost complete dispersal of successive waves of immigrants among the various strata of the institutional structure. (3) Lack of any particularist identification on the part of the immigrant group. (4) Total transformation of the leadership of immigrant groups according to the institutional demands of the new country. (5) Utilization not only of formal institutions but also of primary groups closely inter- woven with the formal institutions . (6) A relatively rapid transformation of the immigrant groups as well as participation by them in the institu- tions of the absorbing society, and a relatively high degree of social activity and orientation to the society's central values .1 \ -....._.._.._. 15- N- Eisenstadt, "18 reel, " IECJEQLHEIQJEQLAQ\Elllqufi.9£.i§£i£§- 99- AmOld Rose (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958), p. 388: for a full discussion of the history of immigration to Israel. see Eisenstadt's The Ab&0\1‘Rtion of Immigrants (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954). 30 31 While this description is necessarily somewhat idealized, it is true that there was overwhelming agreement on the central values of the society: pioneering, egalitarianism, return to the soil, self—defense. This ideological homo- geneity was especially marked among the roughly seventy thousand immigrants who arrived in the country between 1904 and 1923, and who today form a large part of its cont rolling elite . The early period was, properly speaking, one of colonization rather than immigration. The settlers came, for the most part, from liastern and Central Europe , and many had been trained for the work of rebuilding the land \vhile still in pioneering youth movements abroad. In motive, expectation, and goal, they were remarkably alike . Although debate over contrasting methods for achieving political independence was frequent, and sometimes bitter, there was little real difference on the issue of social regeneration. (The first line of one of the more popular songs of the period was, "We have come to the land to build it and to be rebuilt by it.") Thus, even before it became clear that the British Mandatory authorities we re not interested in internal education, \x'elfarc, 01‘ economic development, the early pioneers seized the opportunity to develop the country in accordance with their ideology. During the several decades that Preceded independence they founded school systems, a giant labor union which played a major role in economic development, the kibbutz (communal settlement) mOVenlent, health services, and a national militia. These were often amateur ente I‘prises, run by volunteers drawn primarily from the kibbutz movement. Care(“Brism was eschewed, and even after years of administrative service in urban ce . . .. . lite rs, leaders identified themselves as farmers . (To this day, the story goes, 32 Ben Cu .l‘ion's identity ca rd, under the heading "Occupation," reads: "Agricultural worker, temporarily head of gove rnment.") The pioneering spirit was held up as both the proper fulfillment of man's destiny and the best way to build the State. Pragmatism and idealism both led ill the same direction, and so long as one was dedicated to the People, no choice between the two was necessary. These "good old days" came to an end in 1948 . Tasks that had been performed on an ad hoc basis, in a spirit of adventure, were now transferred to the State, where their execution became formalized and bureaucratized. Although the personnel, at least in the early years of statehood, was often the same as before, success came to be evaluated in terms of efficiency, economy, and stability, rather than innovation and improvisation. The very fact of But more important was the statehood accounted for much of the transition . initiation of mass immigration . TABLE 1. —Jewish immigrants, by continent of birth3 (1919-1959) All Oceana Not Period Continents Asia Africa Europe & America Known —; 1919 -May 14, 1948 452,138 40, 776 4, 033 377, 487 7, 579 22, 283 May 15, l948-Decem- ber 31, 1959 945, 261 500,273 425,564 19.424 \ a . . . . . I Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics, The Statistical Abstract of £5391, 1952,1360, p. 70, u-..” ‘M Table 1 summarizes part of the story of immigration. During the first I‘We . . . . . 1V6 years of statehood, immigration was more than twice that of the preceding 33 thirty years. The sheer quantity of new immigrants forced an immediate expansion of government services in almost every sector. Nor could the info r - mal, personal style of the pro-state era be maintained. Standards of bureau- cratic efficiency had to prevail, lest the process of absorption and integration of the new arrivals break down completely. Moreover, quite apart from the quantity of immigrants, the State (and the older community it represented) had to adjust and adapt to a radical shift in motives for immigrating. The post-1948 arrivals were no longer committed Zionists, eager to redeem themselves and the Jewish people, to "build and be rebuilt." These were, instead, the displaced persons of liurope, the refugees from terrorism or poverty in Asia and Africa. To them, Israel represented haven or religious ideal, but not bold social experiment. They differed not only in aspiration, but in background. The passage of time and the trauma of the War had. changed the European community; the Afro-Asian immigrants came from another world entirely. The Western— Oriented Jew was often shocked and bewildered: were these, the illiterate begga rs of Casablanca, the dark-skinned vendors of Baghdad, the primitive Peasants of Kurdistan, also God's Chosen People? This was not the stuff of redemption, but a new Babel; where was the sweet simplicity of pioneering days 1’ The Veteran looked at the new masses, and saw, not the Ideal achieved, but the di verse fears (where were the dreams?) that brought them to Israel; the dashing cultures (where, where was the comfortable homogeneity of yeste rday‘?) they Carried with them; the blatant dissonance of wanting to be safe, to be normal, t . . 0 be Western, to be the Chosen People, to be rich; and, perhaps, a glimpse-- but no more than that--of the subtle harmony with which being a Jew tempered that dissonance. The result was, of course, to reinforce the rational bureaucracy. If the standards and values of the old community were alien to the new immigrants, government authority and direction would--and did--replace them . From community to sub-cultures When the pace of immigration was leisurely, and the emerging values of the new society clearly articulated, there was energy available to worry not only about the economic and political integration of the immigrant, but also about his social and cultural integration . With mass immigration it became necessary to devote the primary effort to economic and, to a. lesser extent, political absorption, often at the expense of socio-cultural , The most important channels of mobility open to new immigrants are the economic one and the bureaucratic -political one, and the mobility which takes place in these channels tends either to remove individual immigrants from their group of origin or to limit the contacts between old and new immigrants to the more formal spheres . In turn, this tendency is connected with the growing segregation of solidary relations in "private" spheres. Thus most of the immigrants still live, from the social and cultural point of view, in relatively segregated spheres, and have few primary contacts with other groups. The result is not so much a plural society, where each group, operat- mg from a base of self-respect, remains part of an accepted whole, as it is a 1 ‘0 n H a - . - . See Eisenstadt, Israel, loc . c1t. , for a thorough discuss1on of this and related points. 2 11319., p.394. 35 frenetic search for unity amidst chaos . The East seeks to emulate the West; the West, itself divided, seeks both to resurrect the prophets and to bury them. to preserve Yiddish culture and to ignore it, to strike out in new directions and to live at casein Zion. llnity, such as it is, derives largely from without, from across the hostile borders . Within, the continuing debate on "the national purpose" indicates that neither sacred nor secular is consensually defined. This is not to say that there is no consensus . All sub-cultures, by definition, partake of a larger, unifying culture and, even where the larger framework is indistinct, it shapes and colors the lesser. Israel is not Nigeria. where, at least until recently, one had to speak not of sub-cultures but of diverse cultures, because the sole source of unity was an artificial, a - historical, political boundary. But within the vague unity of Israel, the sub— cultures remain autonomous in important respects . Because agreement on goals is lacking, each group is free to seek its own way.1 One internal source of cultural unity does, however, appear to be gaining influence--much to the consternation of the veteran generation (as pre- 1Curiously, this situation has a beneficent effect on social research. Under more typical conditions, researchers must beware of so phrasing their items that response will be dictated, not by personal conviction, but by national Syrnbol. It would be difficult, for example, to assess the true feeling of many Arnericans regarding racial segregation: in the South, as in the North, flppropriate responses are socially prescribed. Survey techniques are often n1adequate devices for probing beneath the prescribed and revealing the believed. In Israel, by contrast, the existence of a variety of sub-cultures, and the lack 0f Uniform prescriptions, permits greater accuracy. On most issues symbol— providing myths are lacking. As a result, although the Israeli is no freer of SO(lial pressures than the American, he is free to pick and choose from among Several responses, all of which are socially acceptable. The pressure is there. but it is less monolithic . (The religious community constitutes, in pa rt, a 1hajor exception, and will be described later.) .30 1948 Israelis are called). As in so many countries of the world, popular American culture is becoming widely diffused. If affects mostly the younger generation, and is reflected in dress, music. the world of entertainment. popular aspiratio.ns--in short, the whole of cultural life. Its diffusion among adults is less rapid. although Tel Aviv's night clubs and hotels do their best to bring the sophistications of the West, and especially of the United States. to the Israeli. Having said all this, it is important to add that the values of the Y'ishuv are not dead. Although the society has undergone radical change. Israel remains, at least so long as the old elite retains power. officially committed to the pioneering values of the past. "Even now the strength and partial primacy of nontraditional collective values is much stronger than in many other modern societies, and the extent of social and economic differentiation and stratification ..1 a . . . . . . . much smaller. Formal homage is still pa1d these ’ nontraditional collective values"; they are still taught in the schools. discussed in the press, and interna- lized by many people. The diffe rence is that they must now compete with the bureaucracy, with the army, and with the attractions of American affluence. and that the competition occurs among people whose commitment to them is. at bEst, minimal. Pghtics: Federalism in apnitary state The effects of mass immigration on political life have been buffered by the entrenchment of a party system whose origins antedate independence by 1Eisenstadt, "Israel," lpc. cit_., p. 439. 37 many years . The Yishuv was organized into several parties that differed in economic program and religious commitment. It was through these parties that most of the welfare programs of the pre-State period were conducted. Because parties were granted responsibilities normally reserved to formal government agencies, they developed nascent polities of their own. They came to operate not only as leadership groups, but also as representatives of highly organized and articulated private organizations . Loyalty to the as yet unborn state was mediated through loyalty to the party. Some of this has carried over into the post-I948 period. Parties have retained several--though by no means all--of their administrative functions, and have observed the gradual extension of government authority with varying degrees of misgiving. Some ministries are still regarded as party fiefdoms, and, by common consent, new immigrants without party affiliation are often "assigned" to one party or another, according to its relative parliamentary strength. 1 At the same time, however, the need to attract non-ideologically Oriented immigrants has forced the parties to shift the nature of their appeal. The quest for political power, as distinguished from organizational expansion, requires greater emphasis on instrumental, aggregative programs, at the eXpense of the ideological and integrative. This shift has, with one exception, n0t yet led to a reduction in the number of parties . (In the last election, held 011 August 15, 1961. eleven parties won representation in the one-hundred and X L. This is done by several methods: a party member is sent to escort the immigrants to Israel, groups of country—bound immigrants are divided among Settlements associated with the various parties, etc . twenty seat parliament.) As the rewards of power have increased, and as the road to power has changed from the appeal of ideology to promises of effective service, so has the party's utility to the citizen been altered. The rewards of party affiliation and activity have become quite this-worldly, for the party provides its followers with one of the few keys to the mysteries and perplexities of the world of the bureaucrat. Government is both more impersonal. and more important, and he who would gain access to the hidden rooms where scarce resources are allocated, in a country where parties. by tradition, function as interest groups, is well advised to be counted among the faithful. It should be clear by now that the setting in which the parties function resembles, in many respects, New York in the early part of this century. If the parties have not become full-fledged Tammanys, it is because they are still bound by their traditions, and because none is quite powerful enough. The political boss, the campaign manager, the "fixer, " for whom power is its own justification, are taking their place in the sun, but their place is still at the fringes, beyond the ideological stalwarts. Votes are bought, special favors offered, free food and movies provided, but even during election campaigns, the debate continues to stress ideology rather than service. The party which has been most successful in adapting to the new Conditions of politics is Mapai, Israel's largest party and the center of every government coalition since 1948. Cynics maintain that its ability to appeal to the immigrant rests on its large measure of control over resources and Services . But it has at least two other major assets, Ben Gurion and its own (it) history. Ben (iurion, who is its leader, has a charismatic appeal that cuts across socio-economic lines, leaving some persuaded that he is, by virtue of achievement and experience, the only legitimate claimant to political predomi - nance, and others convinced, more or less literally, that he is the Messiah. Mapai's history as the party most prominent in the struggle for independence. and as the home of many of Israel's revered leaders, is also a major asset. Although it still perceives itself as a workers' part'yin the l9th century European tradition, it comes closest of all Israel's parties to the aggregatiVe style of American or British parties . Its heterogeneity in following has also created internal dissension, on matters secular (winning elections) as well as sacred (socialist ideology) . To the left of Mapai are Mapam, L'Achdut Avodah, and the Communist Party. The first two, more doctrinaire in their socialism than Mapai and sometimes members of a coalition government, have their core strength in pa rty-sponsored kibbutzim. In the first two parliamentary elections after independence. they submitted a joint list of candidates, but in the last three . . . 1 . . each has submitted its own. Observers are sometimes surprised that they have maintained their strength over the years, fluctuating between a high of 15 .5 per cent of the popular vote and a low of 12.5 per cent. Electoral research lIsrael elects its parliament by a system of proportional representa- tion in which each party submits one list of candidates for the entire country. The method Ofa single national list is unique. Ben Gurion has been vociferous in his demands that the system be revised to allow for majority, rather than Coalition, government. But his demands are not backed by sufficient strength t0 force the issue. 40 is only now coming into its own in Israel; hence explanations are really guesses. The best guess is that the various methods of parceling out immigrants among the parties has helped them maintain their strength. TABLE 2. --Results of Parliamentary electionsa 1949 1951 1955 1939 1961 Ilerut l4 8 15 1.7 17 General Zionists 7 20 13 8 Progressives 5 4 5 6 Liberals 17 Mapai 4o 45 40 47 42 Achdut Avodali 9 9 9 19 15 Mapam II) 7 8 Communists 4 5 6 3 S Agudat Yisrael { 4 S (i o Agudat Yisrael Workers 2 lo Mizrachi and Mizrachi Workers (N.R.P.) 10 ll 12 12 k Arab Parties 2 S 5 5 4 Other Lists 7 3 - - - a‘Source: Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of '9--- l§ rael, 1939/3519, p. 415; 1961 results from The Jerusalem Best, August 17, 19b]. --- ..._- The appeal of the Communist Party is strongest among Israel's Arabs; the party iS categorically excluded from the seats of power. 41 To Mapai's right are the Liberal Party and l'lerut (Freedom). The Liberals are a coalition party, composed of the old Progressives and General Zionists, and won seventeen seats in the recent elections . Their core strength is middle and upper middle class . The coalition, designed to provide a responsible alternative to Mapai, is ideologically somewhat uncomfortable, as it encompasses economic doctrines ranging from the center of the political spectrum to its far right. The far right, however, is occupied primarily by l~lerut, which also won seventeen seats, and is largely the party of the dis- affected immigrant. Because of its extremist position on foreign affairs. which calls for the expansion of the country to its historic borders (i.e., conquest of Jordan), He rut has also been excluded from government coalitions . Economic cleavage provides one basis of differentiation among parties; religious cleavage provides another. The parties described above are all formally secular. But a substantial number of Israelis take the position that the State, to be true to its historic purpose, must incorporate Jewish religious law. This view has spawned three parties: the Mizrachi and Mizrachi Workers, which are joined in the National Religious Party; Agudat Yisrael; and Agudat Yisrael Workers. In 1949, all submitted a single list of candidates. Since then, the less orthodox National Religious Party has run separately and the Agudah parties themselves submitted separate lists in the last elections. Finally, Arab parties affiliated mo re or less formally with Mapai, and Operating exclusively among the Arab minority, which comprises some 12 per Cent of the population, hold four seats. (Other parties, usually representing ethnic groups, appear on the ballot regularly but have failed, in the last three 42 elections, to gain any representatimi.f) Despite this proliferation of political parties, each serving its traditional. clientele and each competing for the favor of the newer immigrants, and despite the strength of nationalist sentiment, political alienation and cynicism are widespread. At least three explanations are frequently offered: Coalition government. ~-Whateve r its other effects, coalition government necessarily introduces confusion into the political. system.1 The voter cannot choose a party solely on the basis of its policies; he must, in addition, take into account the probable coalitions which will result from the election. But in order to do so, he must be able to predict how other voters will vote . Moreover, he cannot be certain which of the parties within the most recent coalition deserves credit for progress during the government's tenure, nor which is to be blamed for failures. As Downs indicates, parties in a coalition government are under pressure to make their policies similar to facilitate efficient action, and to make them different to increase their own baSe of Support. Many voters are unable to follow the unpublicized compromises with ideological purity which are the price of coalition. The result is a devaluation of politics . Traditional bureaucracy. --lsrael's growing bureaucratic establishment is only slowly being neutralized. Transfer of civil service control to the Treasury remains incomplete, and ministries traditionally in the hands of The difficulty of rational chmce in a mult1~party coalition system ls discussed in Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democ ragy (New York: I"Iarper and Brothers, 1957), pp. 142-163. ...-—. regular members of the coalition have become recruitment agencies for their minister's parties. Inadequacies in the background and training of civil servants are only a partial source of popular disenchantment; more important is the much—criticized bureaucratic attitude that civil service posts are first of all perquisites of party activity, and that their service function is secondary. Although awareness of the problem has resulted in efforts to correct it. complaints against bureaucratic inadequacy are widespread. Permanent crises . --Finally, the country faces a number of substantive problems to which no immediate solutions are apparent. Aside from the obvious and pressing Arab-Israel crisis, the need to achieve economic independence. to provide required services for indigent immigrants, to solve the tensions between secular and religious communities and between the Western and Oriental, and to find some modus vivendi with the Arab minority, are deeply felt. The general belief is that little can be done about these problems, yet. Since they are the most important problems before the nation, no government which does not solve them can be truly effective. To the extent that a citizen judges his government by its effectiveness, his judgment cannot be wholly e e_*-r"ce‘ \e‘i '1 's"'ce. DOSIUVC. To that ext nt, tli rclexan ot gor iimeiti diminish d 3116 Great Divide On almost every index of economic development or political modernity, ISrael ranks quite high. Of sixty-six countries in underdeveloped areas. it is third (behind V :nezuela and Uruguay) in per capita gross national product; it is flrst in number of persons per doctor; ninth in number per vehicle: fourth in ~14 number per telephone; first in number per radio; tied for first in number per newspaper; third in per capita energy consumed; first in per cent of population in labor unions; first in per cent of population in cities of over one hundred thousand population; first in literacy; first in primary school enrollment . 1 . . . . . ratio. Almond and Coleman include it as one of three Afro-ASian countries (the others are Ceylon and the Philippines) which come closest to fulfilling . . . . 2 . their model of a modern political system . Arnold Rose includes a chapter on . . . . 3 . . . . Israel in his book on advanced societies. Israel maintains a high level of social welfare, has several major universities and research institutions. supports a refined cultural and artistic community, and maintains a stable and competitive party system. In all these respects, Israel looks much more like the Scandanavian or Low Countries than it does like its Mid-liastern neighbors. But despite the general complexion of modernity, large groups of people retain traditional patterns . Exposure to, and even consumption of, the twentieth century symbols of "modern living' --telephones, radios, resort vacations, and the like—-does not necessarily involve a change in personal style. Within the broad, modern culture it has attained, Israel nurtures a number of sub-cultures, some quite traditional. The most obvious, and most significant, division in Israel today is ‘ 4 O O that between West and Fast. There are three major groups in the population, 1 . . . Data from Almond and Coleman, op. cit., Appendix (not numbered). 21339.. pp. 564-565. 3Rose, 2p: cit., pp. 384—443. 4Since our concern throughout is with Israel's Jewish population, the problem of the omission of the Arab minority from the cultural mainstream is not di scussed . 45 of roughly equal size: immigrants from Europe and America, immigrants from Africa and Asia, and native -born Israelis(over sixty per cent of whom come from Afro -Asian families). These differences are more important even than length of residence in the country, which distinguishes veterans (pm-1948 immigrants) from new immigrants (since 1948). The data in Table 3 show that the highest scorers on every index of economic and educational attain- ment are the European and American veterans, followed, at some distance, by those born in Israel. The next group is not the Afro-Asian veterans, but the new immigrants from the West, who score higher than the Afro -Asian veterans on every index, especially on those which summarize educational attainment. The Afro-Asian veterans are followed, in turn, by new immi- grants from Africa and Asia. . . . . 3 TABLE 3. - Economic status and educational attainment of various groups Europe or America Asia or Africa 12:861- All (Jew1sh) rn Persons CD | CD Cl] | U) c: H 1:: H :3 E g a E a t”: 8 2° £3 8 g. > Z E > Z 5 Persons per room: Less than 1 11.2% 5.6% 3.6% 1.6% 6. 3% 6.1% 1. 00 - 1.99 54.6 39.6 27.2 16.0 39.9 37.0 2. 00 - 2.99 28.6 41.0 31.1 30.4 39.4 34.0 3. 00 - 3.99 3.3 8.5 16.9 21.0 8.1 10. 7 More than 4 2.3 5.3 21.2 31.0 6.3 12.2 46 TABLE 3 - Continued Europe or America Asia or Africa Israel- All er'S") b0 rn Persons 3 E a 8 E g 8 8 .59 8 8 a > z E > z E Own: Radio 92.0% 82.8% 77.5%. 64.1% 84. 9% 79. 655:, Electric refriger- ator 78.7 47.8 36.3 6.5 58.5 44.1 Ice-box 17.4 4.6.4 52.7 72.5 32.4 45. 5 Percent liter- ate (age 14+) 97.4 95.0 ‘ 68.5 60.6 96.1 85.6 Females who: Did not at- tend school 4.8% 6.3% 53.2% 57 8% 7. 3% 21. 79;. Did not com- plete pri- mary edu- cation 16.3 31.9 23.4 26.2 21.2 24.2 Completed primary education 40.4 40.6 18.5 13.0 48. 7 33. 4 Completed Post-pri- mary edu- Clation 33.4 19.2 4.5 2.8 20. .6 18.3 Completed higher edu- cation 5.1 2.0 0.4 0.2 2. 2 2. 4 J 47 TABLE 3 -- Continued 7’ I.‘ .- 9‘1- '.h Europe or America Asia or Africa Tm" All (Jewrs ) iorn Persons 8 ' a 8 ' is a E: a 8 5 a 3 Es 3 ‘30 > Z E > Z E Males who: Did not at- tend school 1.0% 2.6% 21.8% 22.5% 2. 0% 8. 215:. Did not com . plete pri- mary edu- cation 17.7 33.1 39.8 49.5 24. 0 31. 8 Completed primary education 37.3 41.2 28.7 19.5 49. 8 35.2 Completed post-pri- mary edu- cation 33.4 18.3 7.6 7 8 21. 4 19. 9 Completed higher edu~ cation 10.2 4.8 2.1 0.7 7 2 4. 9 aDerived from data presented in the Statistical Abstract of Israel, 1959/60, (Israel: Central Bureau of Statistics, 1961), pp. 128, 138, 393, 394. The data are based on surveys conducted between 1954 and 1959. More important than the differences summarized in Table 3 is the extent to which community boundaries are maintained. Table 4 offers data on inter-community marriage in Israel, which occurs far less frequently than would be expected if continent of origin played no part in mate selec - tion . . . . .. ,21 TABLE 4. --Inter- community marriage in 195.8 Continent of Origin and liXpL‘Cth Actual Length of Time in Israel Frequency Frequency Bride and Groom Both of Euro- pean or American Descent: . . . . . . . . . 24.7"; - ~ . - - 43.037; and ofthese Both new immigrants: - . - - - . - 5 .7 14.6 Both veterans: . . . . . . . . . . . 0.8 2.8 Both Israel-born: . . . . . . . . . 2.6 9.0 Bride and Groom Both of African or Asian Descent! . . . . - - - - - 25.1 - - - - - 43.4 and ofthese Both new immigrants: . . . . . . . 14,7 . . . . . 31 Both veterans: . . . . . . . . . . . 0,1 , , . . , 0, Both Is rael-born: . . . . . . . . . 0.6 . . . . . 3 . [0003 Total of Same Continent of Origin: . . . . . . 49.8 . . . . . 86.4 Total of Same Continent of Origin and Same Length of Time in Israel: . . . . . . 24, 62.0 a: Total of Different Continent of Origin: . . . . 50,2 , , , . . 13.6 Total of Different Continent of Origin and Different Length of Time in Israel: . . . . . 26.1 , , , , . 6,1 N=14,375 ‘ ._‘___ aData are derived from Statistical Abstract of Israel, 1959,61) (Israel: Central Bureau of Statistics, 1961), p. 43. bThe expected frequency of each class is calculated as the joint PrObability that any randomly selected bride and groom will fall into that class. The division is one of which all Israelis are conscious . It is obvious In employment, in cultural consumption patterns, and, to a lesser extent, in residential patterns. Whether it has its origin in class difference or in caste 49 consciousness, Afro-Asians. even of the second generation, feel discriminated against; Europeans, with varying degrees of guilt, avoid social contact with "dark" Jews . Differences in education and income carry over into the second generation, and the hope that this is the "generation of the desert" foreshadcm'ing the Promised Land of social and cultural integration, fades . The existence of "two Israels" is excoriated by all political leaders. It is certainly the major reason for the devaluation, in the schools and in the popular culture, of European Jewish literature and history, and for the heavy emphasis on the Old Testament, whose history is shared by all sections of the community. This trend, however, distresses many Israelis, especially those of the veteran generation. To them, being "Jewish" means being "\’iddish"--that is, maintaining the values developed in Eastern Europe. If the re is a tension between these values and those of the Afro-Asian community, so much the worse for the latter. In their eyes, the worth of being an Israeli lies in the ability to live a full and free Jewish life, and any lowering or Changing the standards of that life to achieve integration produces an Israel Shorn of its Jewish heritage. To this argument the typical response of the younger generation is ' that being "Jewish,' as the veterans would have it, means recreating the ghetto psychology, which is both costly and inappropriate to a free society. The values appropriate to such a society, if one is to find them in the Jewish tradition at all, are most closely approximated during the only other period Of national Jewish sovereignty-~the days of the Kings . Neither line of reasoning has much appeal for the immigrant from the 50 East. (Afro—Asians are called Mizrachiim--Iiasterne rs or (l)rientals-—in Israel.) His orientation is far more instrumental. and presumed discrimina- tion in employment is of immeasurably greater importance to him than the rather abstract debate on communal values. 1113 attachment to Israel is more likely religious -national than Zionist-ideological. l-le is,especially in the second generation, as likely to exhibit contempt for his own cultural back- ground as to resent efforts to "Westernize" him. As the second generation European rejects his ghetto past, so the Afro-Asian seeks to sever his ties \vith his father's birthplace. And the Biblical heritage which he is offered as replacement has little appeal. Far more attractive as a source of values and cultural patterns is America. In turning Westward, he is less likely to feel guilty than his European brother, for he was not nu rtured in the belief that his task was to recreate an independent and fertile culture of his own. At the same time, however, he incurs both the wrath of the European veteran. who has already tried the West and found it wanting, and the resentment of the younger generation of European origin, who find in his behavior a cheap and sterile Levantinism. Thus his efforts to shake off the past do nothing to decrease his alienation from the culturally dominant community. Luggists and Jews ~— The meeting between East and West is one source of tension: that 1These comments are frankly impressionistic. They are not intended to Slepict some sort of modal "national character, " but to provide a "feel" for the fluidity and tensions of Israel's developing culture. A more cautious evaluation of Levantinism. based on inte rview data, appears in Chapters VI and \"ll below. SI . . . 1 . . between formal orthodoxy and secularists is another. From filteen to twenty per cent of Israel's population are "Judaists" --a term which, in current usage, refers to a strictly religious interpretation of Judaism, and is to be contrasted with "Jew," which comprehends " . . .all those secular components of the common life of Jews as Jews, which 'Judaism' leaves out." Horace Kallen summarizes the position of the Judaists as follows: If . . . Israel is not an obstruction to the advent of the Messiah, it is a divinely ordained means and a way toward his advent. To speed his advent, the law of the State must be the law of Moses and of Israel as revealed by Jehovah to his prophets and developed and interpreted by the rabbis . The creed and code of . . . Israel must be Torah--must be the Bible and Talmud whose custodians and teachers are the rabbinate and whose. adminis— trators must be the officers of government. . . . Israel should be a church-state or a state -church, as the Lord requireth; say a. theo- cracy, if you will; all its people should be faithful to the Torah as its orthodox official custodians interpret Torah; and the commandment breakerSP-certainly the public ones-~should be punished as they deserve. Israel's orthodox community ranges from the Neturei Kartah, the srnall but vocal group to whom the very existence of the State is a blasphemy (it was not founded by the hand of the Lord) to the pious non -theocrat,for whom religion is a private matter. The former group is not, properly speaking, within Israel society at all; by choice, it is outside, preserving the True Faith and awaiting the Advent. The second group, very much within the society, is 1Earlier in these pages, "secular" was used as the opposite of "sacred, " while here we use it as the opposite of religious. In the first case it implies a difference in style of thought; in the second, the difference in style is joined by a difference in content. The religious and the sacred, while related, are not the Same-mot, at any rate, if religion is reserved for reference to theological Systems. Religious worship is one kind of sacred belief. . 2HoraceKallen. Utopians at Bay (New York: Theodore Herzl Founda- tlon, .1958), p. 166. 3&9” p. 1.67. .J I [\J not a part of the formal religious community. In Hebrew, the word dati means religious. But in Israel today, it is reserved for those whose religious commitment is highly formal, and is expressed through identification with one of the religious political parties. The observant member of Mapai is not. in this sense, a dirt}. (Most curiously, the opposite of "dati" is not, as the dictionary would have it, "chiloni, " or secular, but rather "chofshi"--frce.) To the dag, Israel is not to be a Jewish state in the same way that America is Christian; it is to be Judaistic, incorporating religious law into the mechanisms of the State itself. Religious freedom is possible with respect to non -Jews, but the Jew must be ruled by his law, which is the Law of God. However distasteful this position is to the socialists who are Israel's founding fathers, political exigency has forced the inclusion of one or another of the religious parties in every government coalition since independence. The price of this inclusion has been the consignment to them of several areas of social policy-~most notably, family law. There is, for example, no civil Inarriage in Israel. Jew and non-Jew alike must be married according to the requirements of their own religion. Moreover, the orthodox Judaists vehemently oppose the introduction into Israel of any less militant brand of Jewish religious expression. Conservative and Reform Judaism. highly Successful in the United States, find organization in Israel extremely difficult. The tensions which inevitably result erupt but rarely. Religious meHibers of Mizrachi are reasonably tolerant, and work toward their various theocratic ends through the established democratic processes. The more dogmatic Agudah members generally segregate themselves from the rest of the UI b.) community. Of Israel's major cities, only in Jerusalem is friction common. There, the peace of the Sabbath is commonly interrupted by the shouted imprecations of kaftan-clad, bearded BI:S_§m, waving their clenched fists at the bicycle-riding or cigarette-smoking trespassers. There occasional violence occurs when thoughtless transgressors attempt, on the Sabbath. to drive near Mea She'arim, headquarters of the faithful, and the municipality's sponsorship of a public swimming pool was greeted by rioting-—a woman's skin is not to be ba red in public. And the country as a whole is upset by the rare sordid incident, as when a Jewish child was denied burial in a Jewish cemetary because his mother's conversion to Judaism, performed yea rs ago by a Reform rabbi in Germany, was not acceptable to the orthodoxy. The prevailing view of the secularists is that the future belongs to them, or perhaps even to Cod—-but certainly not to the Judaists . Though the latter are remarkably successful at maintaining their strength, at preventing their children from breaking away, they are small and they are, in the popular View, anachronistic. The Mizrachi parties are even now coming to resemble the various Christian Democratic parties of Central Europe. The Agudah Parties and their members will eventually become--say the others--an exotic Sect, important chiefly as a tourist attraction like the Amish. In their confidence that time will solve the problem, the secularists make few attempts at immediate frOntal attack. They hold that there are enough serious problems requiring COnstant effort; to confront the problem of the Judaists. which is a relatively minor irritant and only rarely a serious embarrassment, would be an 1mpossible luxury and an unnecessary source of division. CHAPTER III I’ROCICDI lR ICS (F rom an interviewer repo rtz) The. inte rviewee's house was located after a search of several hours. He lives in a one-room apartment at the rear of a large courtyard, at the edge. of the religious quarter. The room is small and sparsely furnished. Present during the interview we re the respondent's two wives. one mother-in-law, one cle mented cousin, and two neighbor women who acted as interpreters. The interviewee, aged sixty-seven, is illiterate. He reads and writes in no language, and speaks only with great difficulty. He was born in Afghanistan. Inoved to Russia when he was about fifteen, and to Israel (via Afghanistan. \Vhe re he remained for several years) when he was about m'enty-five. He never managed to learn any of the languages to which he was exposed or. if he did, he has forgotten them. He was delighted with the idea that people were soliciting his opinions. While the concept of the interview situation eluded him, he responded to each question \vith a bright smile. Unfortunately, he did not understand most questions. and the neighbors had to translate into a pigin-Russian, in which he is a bit more fluent. But whether or not he understood, he was extremely warm, obviously pleased, and very reluctant to have the interview concluded. His wives were upset by the experience. They could not understand why any- One would be interested in his opinion. This feeling they articulated, loudly and repeatedly. It was evident that much of the interviewee's delight at having been selected resulted from his desire to escape the derision of his \Vi ves . The mother-in-law sat quietly throughout the. interview, taking the entire procedure quite casually. The cousin interrupted repeatedly. He assumed that the interviewer was a government official, and he was anxious not to I1‘1iss the chance to put his grievances--of which there were many-~on the record. The interview had to be stopped in the middle, as a result of the problems n‘Uentioned above. 'Jl 'Jl The description of the research on which this study is baSed is divided into three sections: the sample, the interviewing, and the interview schedule. Instrument development, of course, preceded both sample selection and interview administration; it is discussed last so that it may be fresh in the mind of the reader when he turns to the results. Sample selection The sample was drawn from the official Register of Voters (1939-60) for the Jerusalem area. Published by the Ministry of the Interior, it is based on the last complete population census which. at the time of the project. was 1948. It is revised yearly, either on appeal from registrants or on the basis of other information gleaned by the Ministry. Since revision is, however. neither systematic nor complete, it is rather inaccurate. It may be that the yearly revision introduces a bias favoring upper socio-economic groups. as their members are most likely to appeal to the Ministry for inclusion. This bias, if it exists at all, is probably slight, as party organizers in poorer Neighborhoods are quite conscientious about insuring the registration of their Supporters. In any event, the Register provides the best available source of names and addresses for survey research. In order to keep the number of variables in the study to a minimum. the sample contained only males. Five hundred and fifty random numbers were Selected from a table randomly entered, and the appropriate names were then transcribed. As expected, approximately Sf) per cent were women. and we re, therefore, immediately dropped. The remaining list contained two hundred and seventy names. Inaccu racy in the Register resulted in serious depletion of this 3 0 group, as shown in Table 5. TABLE 5. --Depletion of sample Group A Group B Reason Number Per cent 0f Reason Number Pm- cent of Original Sample CorrectedSample Deceased 9 3 .3 Unlocated 26 12.2 MOVCd 9 3 .3 Refused 12 5 . o Emigrated 14 4.8 III I 3 1.4 In stitutional- Error ) 7 3. 3 lized 8 3 .0 Used in pre- test 6 2.2 In army 3 1.1 Othera 8 3 .0 Total {'7 20.7 48 22 . 3 ¥ 3"Other" includes transients and people under voting age. b"Error" refers to completed interviews that were dropped from the analysis because of some question as to the interviewer's reliabilityor accuracy. One hundred and sixty-five interviews were completed. In calculating the percentage of completed interviews. correction should be made for Register error. by subtracting from the original sample all people in Group A above. SO doing leaves a corrected sample of two hundred and thirteen. Those dropped from this groupare listedinGroup B above. The hundred and sixty—five completed interviews constitute 77 .5 per cent of the corrected sample. The ratherlarge number of people who could not be located results from illcorrect addresses listed in the Register. Too, street names and house numbers are frequently changed. People with survey experience in Israel emphasized QJI \I that one could presume the "unknowns" to be randomly distributed. (While this was reassuring, searches for the respondents consumed an ave rage of two hours per interview, thereby halving the originally hoped-f0 r sample.) Inte rviewing Interviewers were obtained from the staff of the Israel Institute for Applied Social Research. Most were college students. and all had had experience in survey work. One general training session was held, and each into rviewer conducted at least one interview under supervision, after which his procedure was evaluated. The major problem encountered in this phase of the project was that many respondents had only a limited knowledge of Hebrew. Because it would have been extremely costly to interview each respondent in his native tongue. interviewers were instructed to improvise, either by spot translations of the QUestions into the respondent's language, or by rephrasing them or explaining difficult words. This obviously impaired, to some extent, the reliability of the answers. Thus, in explaining the meaning of "scientific development" in an agree ~disagree item which read "We would be better off with less scientific development and more simple faith," some interviewers gave as an example of SCicence the development of medicine, while others used the atomic bomb. Clearly, in large measure the example conditioned the answer. While there is no way of knowing the extent to which such difficulties actually affect the nature of the data, the interviewers were cautioned to keep their interpretations as V511 ue -free as possible. Periodic discussion with the interviewers revealed that these efforts were fairly successful. After some experience with the specific language difficulties most likely to be encountered. standard examples or rewordings were provided. Valiant efforts were made to conduct the interviews in privacy. but crowded housing conditions often made this impossible. Whenever other people were present during the inte rview, they were cautioned to keep silent and not comment in any way on the questions or answers. While the request was sometimes ignored, it did at least reduce the impact of bystanders upon the results. Some respondents were under the impression that the interview e 1‘ represented the government. Their total lack of familiarity with the interview situation made it impossible to persuade them otherwise. Again, however. in most cases the assurance of anonymity was well-received. The rate of refusal--low by Israel standa rds--and the readiness in most cases to answer questions regarding party preference--high by Israel standards--stemnied, it is believed, from the description of the study as part of an international public Opinion survey sponsored by an American university. (The Bureau of Social and Political Research at Michigan State University is. in fact, engaged in a long-term project on the development of political attitudes in several countries.) While some respondents were greatly perplexed by the proceedings, most either understood what was going on and gladly cooperated, or were flattered at having been sought out and went along with the interviewer. The impact of cLlltural differences between interviewer and respondent on the answers was nlinimized by strict instructions, usually followed, to set down the answers ve r - ba ti m . 39 How much reliability can we, attribute to the results of a study affected by so many problems in both sampling and interviewing? There is no doubt that the results are not so clinically pure as one might wish. But whatever error the sample includes does not seem to be markedly biased in favor of any special group in the population; in age, income, and country of origin, the sample distributions are quite similar to those in the population as a whole. Too, since the bulk of the interviewing was conducted by the author and one exceptionally effective interviewer, while other interviewers were carefully supervised, the probability of significant interviewer error is greatly reduced.1 In any event, in view of the results reported later it is hardly likely that these problems deserve to be regarded as serious methodological weak- nesses . "The Interview Schedule In planning this project, the original intention was to administer a paper-and-pencil questionnaire to as many groups as possible. Had this plan been. followed, the sample would have been much larger, and the questions . .. . 3 themselves would have been of the fixed-alternatlve type. Several problems, lReassurance as to the significance of these problems from Dr. Louis Gllttman, Director of the Israel Institute for Applied Social Research, and from Mr: Uzi Peled, who is in charge of the Institute's field work, were no less W61come than their most gracious cooperation throughout the research period. 2A complete translation of the final interview schedule is found in the Appendix . 3A fixed—alternative question is one which provides a check-list of reSponses from which the interviewee is asked to select his answer. It is con- tr«'clsted to open questions, where no such responses are provided, and where the interviewee is, therefore, free to structure his own answer. bl) among them widespread lack of adequate language skills, the small number of organized groups to be found in jerusalem and their un representative membership, and the difficulty of access even to these made it necessary to revise the earlier plan. The final decision to collect the data in a smaller number of personal interviews was prompted, however, not only by these technical reasons, but also by the belief that the theoretical requirements of the study demanded more extensive information than could be elicited from more cursory methods. In order to increase the reliability and validity of the schedule. ten extensive revisions were made of the first draft. The final version bears almost no resemblance to the first. About twenty pretest interviews were conducted, primarily to check on question wording and instrument length. No formal analysis of the pretests was conducted, however, for lack of both time and money. But rambling by respondents was strongly encouraged during the pretests, and the final. draft includes many items which were suggested, usually unwittingly, by those interviewed. Each of the pretests was carefully evaluated with respect to the general theory, in an effort; to determine how fruitful the various draft questionnaires would prove when administered to the whole sample. The final version includes one hundred and eight items, and. its administration took, on the average, a little more than an hour. In the tables which follow, those items used in the analysis are grouped according to the variables they measure. together with the gross I rCsponses to them. Comment on the patterns of response is reserved for 01 subsequent chapters . Orientation toward Chang. --This critical theoretical variable was measured by five items, with the following results: TABLE 0a . "Orientation toward change: Individual items Q) n =3 '8 8 at} . Q) ~— h .——4 8 8 9 ~11 330 5 =3“ :3 5.1 :0 :0 {'3 9 .9 "‘ ~5 5 as < 3% e as e 21 . The trouble with the world today is that it's changing too fast. 32 08 12 43 10 105 20. He who increases knowledge increases sorrow. 32 41 5 71 15 104 3 1 . We would be better off with less scientific development and more simple faith. 32 43 10 03 .17 105 38. Life was better in the old days . 39 34 24 52 10 105 43. The best way of life is to walk in the paths of our fathers . 47 37 11 01 8 104 In the analysis, response categories were collapsed: strongly agree and agree were combined and scored zero, disagree and strongly disagree were Combined and scored two, and a response of "undecided" or no response at all 1 . . We re each scored one. The results were added, giVing each person a total Score over all five items . I . . . . . . This procedure was followed in all items with Similar response Categories. The purpose was not only to make the data more manageable, but TABLE 0b. --(‘)rientation toward change: Cumulative scores 0:20 4:22 8:29 i: 5 5: 9 9: 3 2-28 0:20 10:12 3: 9 7: a_ -__ 65‘ 3a 44 The cumulative scores were, in turn, grouped to provide an index of orientation toward change. The groupings are shown in Table 0b. The sixty-two people who scored lowest were assigned an index score of zero; the highest among them disagreed with no mo re than one of the five items. The middle group of fifty-nine people was assigned an index score of one; this group includes people who disagreed with no more than three of the five items . ' The smallest group, and presumably the most positive toward change, includes forty-four people who disagreed with four or five items; it was assigned an index score of two. \vere adapted from the Lerner study referred to earlier. They include: 19. If you were chosen manager of a radio station, what kinds of programs would you like to broadcast? 20. If you were chosen editor of a newspaper, what kind of a paper would you like to edit? 48. What is the most important problem facing people like you today? 51. In your opinion, what is the most serious internal problem facing the State today? .— -.....——.__.—.__- to eliminate any error occasioned by the observed inability of many respondents '50 grasp the distinction between strong agreement and agreement, etc . b3 80. If, for some reason, you couldn't live in Israel. in what other country would you choose to live? 82. Suppose we could tell you anything you want to know about that country. What two questions would you be most interested in asking? 83 . Suppose you we re elected prime minister. What sorts of things' would you want to do first? In addition to coding each of these questions separately, a field code was assigned each respondent. Answers to questions 19, 20, 80, and 82 were read together, and the respondent was rated as having low (0), medium (1), or high (2) psychic mobility. Fifty-two people scored zero; fifty-eight scored one; the remaining fifty-five scored two. Education. “Education was one of a number of demographic variables included, but deserves separate treatment because of its theoretical importance. Questions were asked regarding both secular and religious education . A total of seventy respondents-~42 per cent of the total--had had some religious education; of these, twenty-one had had religious education only. A four-point index of educational attainment was constructed, and produced the following results: TABLE 7 . --Educational attainment No secular education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No education to some primary school . . . . . . . . . . . . Completed primary school to some secondary school . . . . . Completed high school or more. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Total h—l Media consumption. "Information was elicited regarding radio listening, movie attendance, newspaper and magazine reading, with the following results: TABL ii 8 . --Media consumption Radio Movie Newspaper Magazine Listening Attendance Reading Reading Daily 129 104 Several times a week 21 10 Once a week 2 47 10 33 Once in two weeks 28 Once a month 21 Less than once a month ~18 Ve ry rarely 5 17 Never .13 42 30 74 Total 165 165 1.65 165 This basic information was supplemented by questions on consumption of news, the specific papers read, magazines read, and reasons for non-consumption of any of the named media, where appropriate. R‘gligifigus. glfgjtlgggf, --One of the four variables used in the basic Classificatory index, whereby traditionals, transitionals, and moderns were Identified, was religious orthodoxy. The gross distribution of answers appears in Table 9a. TABLE 9a. --Religious orthodoxy: Individual. items 66. Do you make a point of observing most of the religious commandments, of observing some of them, or do you generallypaylittle attention to them? Most . . . . . . 56 Some . . . . . 57 Little attention . . 52 Total 165 67 . How often do you attend the synagogue? Every day . . . . . . 41 Every week . . . . . . 38 Important holidays only . 52 Very rarely . . . . . . 17 Never . . . . . . . . 17 Total ' 165 68. Do you observe the dietary laws? If so, only at home, or everywhere? Everywhere . . . . . . 94 Only at home . . . . . 27 Do not observe . . . . 43 Total 164 69. Do you put on phylacteries?a How regularly? Daily . . . . . . . . 61 Irregularly . . . . . . 23 Never ........81 Total 165 aPhylacteries are ritual objects placed on the left arm and forehead during the. morning prayers. Question 68 was dropped from the final index. as it failed to discriminate sufficiently between orthodox and non-orthodox. The cumulative scores on the remaining three items. with 0 representing the most orthodox position. and the index groupings. are shown in Table 9b. 66 TABLli 9b. --Religious orthodoxy: Cumulative scores 0:51 2:20 5:26 I: 8 3: 8 6:29 4:2: T0181 59 51 55 Beivli‘og.1‘_ap.higfidat3. ~-Questions were included regarding age, occupation, income, length of time in Israel, and country of origin. An unfortunate omission from the schedule was a question on country of origin of parents, which would have been most helpful in the case of the Israel-born. The distributions of age and country of origin in the sample correspond quite closely to those in the population of Jerusalem, and are presented in Table 10. TABLE 10 . --Area of origin and age group of respondents Origin Age Russia and Poland . . . . . . . . . 17 20-29 . . . . . .46 Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, 30-39 . , . . . .36 Bulgaria, Yugoslavia. , , , , , , 27 40-49. . . . . .34 Germany and Austria , , , , , , , 5 50—59, , , , , .22 Morocco and Tunisia , , . , , .17 60-69. . . . . .21 Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Yemen.............39 70-79......5 Israel..............57 TOW ”34 Other..............3 Total 165 67 We turn now to a description of the dependent variables of the study, which include measures of political interest, orientation toward parties, attitudes toward civil rights and Israel's pioneering ideology, political activity, and party choice. Politicguiitgi‘gst. --This variable was measured both directly and indirectly. Respondents were asked how frequently they discussed politics with their friends and with their family (questions 17 and 18), whether they had voted in the last local and national elections (questions 90 through 93), and whether they would describe themselves as very interested, somewhat interested, not too interested, or not interested at all in political affairs, the last followed by a question regarding the reason for their level of interest (questions 78 and 79). The boundary between interest and activity is hazy; questions about activity included several on frequency of attendance at various, kinds of political meetings (87 through 89) and one on plans for participation in the (then) forthcoming elections (94) . Because the general level of involvement was so low, no attempt was made to construct a graded scale of activity. Orientation toward authoritarian leadership and political parties_. --This key dependent variable was measured by a six-item scale, reproduced together \vith the gross results in Table 11a. These items were designed to measure the acceptance of compromise, and of parties as vehicles of compromise, as opposed to reliance on authoritarian decision makers. The descriptive items introduced in the preceding pages do not exhaust the independent variables included in the questionnaire . The interested rG‘ader is referred to the Appendix, where the entire questionnaire is reproduced. 68 TABLE 11a. "Leaders and parties: Individual items 3' '2': 3 3.3 :25 ~ 1) 2 2:; EV: _. 5 53 a I ":1 ’3 5 'BL 1‘6 "‘ a '31; :3 f .552 5 :75 :3 ’C L“: C :73“: {- 23 . What we need more than anything else is a strong leader to tell us what to do. 39 56 4 53 12 164 27. A successful political leader is like a father to his people. 42 79 6 .34 4 165 32. In a well established state, there wouldn't be any need for political parties . 1.8 40 8 68 31 165 39 . A great political leader would never, under any circumstances, compromise with his opponents . 9 3 ,1 3t) 76 19 165 44. Whoever opposes a great political leader is either wicked or foolish. 18 51 12 65 19 165 46. We would be better off with a few strong leaders instead of political parties . 33 46 15 59 12 165 From these items, an abbreviated index of orientation toward parties \vas constructed; on each item, agreement was scored zero, disagreement was scored two, and an expression of no opinion or an undecided response was Scored one. The totals, and the manner in which they were grouped, are indicated in Table 111). Group A was assigned an index score of zero; group B a score of one, group C a score of two, and group D a score of three. 69 TABLE 11b. --Leaders and parties: Cumulative scores A. 13 c 1) 0: 7 3: 3 6:17 10:18 1-10 4226 7: 3 11: 2 = 5: 8 8222 12518 7 7 97-14. "FOtal 44 37 46 38 Civil liberties . --Similar index-formation procedures we re used with -m-H -_ two groups of items regarding sensitivity to civil liberties. The first group is presented in Tables 12a and 121). TABLE 12a. --Sensitivity to civil liberties (1): Individual items cu r: o 8 '0 90 r: '31; 3:: a 8 .. "23 5% e a a J—3 C n u-i Hop: 0 (I) go 29 23% D m": 5.. 25 The Communist Party in Israel should have the same rights as all other parties . 6 42 12 50 55 165 30. The Arabs in Israel should be required to obtain police permission whenever they wish to travel from place to place. 39 68 9 41 8 165 37 . Sale of non—kosher meat should be abso- lutely forbidden. 66 26 6 47 20 165 42. Newspapers should be allowed to print anything they want to, except for military secrets and slander. 64 70 5 20 6 165 71) TABLE 121). --Index of sens1tiv1ty to c1v11 liberties (I) A B C 0: 6 3:11 6:21 I: 4 4:50 7: 4 2:2 3=_Z 8:3- Total 59 68 38 3These items are not all in the same direction. The index takes account of this, and a low index score indicates disagreement with the first and fourth items and agreement with the second and third. The second group of civil rights items is somewhat more complex. Seven types of people (communists, atheists, people suspected of disloyalty, people with unpopular ideas, people who are dissatisfied with the government, people who are "always criticizing the State,"and people who denounce the State) were posited; the respondent was asked, with respect to each, whether he agreed or disagreed that people of a given type should be forbidden to speak in public, that they should be forbidden to vote, and that they should be punished. In presenting the results in Table 13a, strong agreement and agreement have been combined in one category, as have. strong disagreement and disagreement. Those respondents who were undecided, expressed no opinion, or failed for Some other reason to answer the question, are omitted from the table. but are included in the index, presented in Table 13b. In that table, group "-”\ I'epresents the least sensitive position on civil liberties, and group "B" the most sensitive position. 71. TABLE 13a. --Sensitivity to civil. liberties (11): Individual items Type Forbidden to Forbidden to speak vote Punished Agree Disagree Agree Disagree Agree Disagree People who denounce the . State 100 60 38 123 76 84 102 Ul \I Communists 87 74 49 109 People who are always criticizing the State .50 111 2.5 136 29 131 People who are suspected of disloyalty to the State 110 .50 67 92 74 84 People with unpopular ideas 29 122 18 135 8 148 Atheists .50 114 3 4 128 3 5 1. 26 People who are dissatis- fied with the way thingsr are going in the govern- ment 31 129 17 143 12 148 TABLE 13b. --lndex of sensitivity to civil liberties (ll) A B C D E 0 to 20:36 21 to 28:30 29 to 34:38 35 to 40:33 41 and 42:28 ‘ Political efficacy. --The four items used to measure the respondent's . . . . 1 . Sense of political efficacy were taken from The Voter Decides . As with the 1Angus Campbell, Gerald Gurin, and Warren Miller, 11:33:69.1: Decidgg (Evanston: Row, Peterson and Co., 1954). 72 other items and variables described in this section, we defer discussion of the results and their relationships to subsequent chapters. TABLE 14a. --Po’litica1 efficacy: Individual items o . s: O :3 ":3 90 E650 :7 O 8 H 1'8 E}; C :0 5.3 4..) CD 9 Q) '7 w-r-a V c0 c3 ,1, 23': Q m": E— 24. Participation in elections is the only way people like you can influence the government . a 30 86 9 31. 9 165 29 . Government officials don't ca re what people like you think. 42 .56 15 47 5 165 36. Sometimes, politics and government seem so complicated that people like you can't understand what's going on. 3,1 60 10 55 9 16.5 41. People like you have no influence over the government. 62 .51 2 46 4 165 8Although this is a standard item, and is reported as forming, with the other three, a Guttman scale, our experience with it was most unsatisfactory. It is so worded that disagreement may be interpreted to mean. "No, there are other ways in which I can influence the government," or "No, even participation in elections doesn't help." TABLE 14b. --Index of political efficacy 0:36 4:35 6:19 1:15 .5: 3 7: - 2:42 8: 6 3:2 Total 102 38 25 73 Piiiwit: --Two questions we re asked regarding party choice-- which party the respondent planned to vote for in the forthcoming elections, and which he supported. As expected, the answers were usually identical. A question regarding reasons for supporting the chosen party, or for not supporting any party, was also included. In Table 15, the first two columns present the percentages of people supporting each party and planning to vote for each party. The third column gives the actual (though unofficial) results of the elections, which took place about six weeks after the end of the interviewing, for the Jerusalem area . The striking discrepancies between the third column and the first two are not probably so much the result of the election campaign as of the dominant political position of Mapai, which leads many people to claim that they support Mapai when in fact they do not, as well as to refuse to identify their party choice when it is other than Mapai. TABLE 15. --Party choice Support Plan to Actual Vote for Results Mapai 3 5 . 2'38 3 3 . 5'26 29 . 1)"; He ruth 7 .9 7 .9 20 .7 Liberal 7 .3 6 .7 9 .5 Agudah Parties 4. 2 7 . 3 20 .0 National Religious 9.1 6 7 10,0 Achduth Avodah 4. 2 3 ,0 3,4 Mapam 1.2 1.2 2 9 None, refusal to answer 30.9 33,9 Other or invalid 4, 5 Tom 190 91} 100 . 0‘11. 100 .015; Classification of respondents In the chapters which follow, respondents have been classified into three groups: traditional, transitional, and modern. The classification was based on four variables, including orientation toward change, psychic mobility, educational attainment, and religious commitment. Each of these-~especially the first--is independently highly associated with the other three, as well as with the dependent variables. When scores on each are summed, however, the resulting index is far more powerful than any single measure. Ideally, the first step in the summation would be to weight each variable in proportion to its contribution to traditionalism or modernity. If we knew, for example, that orientation toward change was twice as important as psychic mobility, we would count it twice as heavily in constructing the final index. Our knowledge of the intricate relationships among the independent variables is, however, not sufficiently detailed to allow such a procedure. While statistical techniques such as multiple regression and factor analysis would have enabled us to identify the relative contribution of each of the four variables, lack of adequate resources made it necessary to operate on the basis of the simplest assumption: each variable contributes equally in determining one's position on the continuum. The assumption does some violence to the theory, but it is no less justifiable a starting point than any alternative assumption. given the paucity of research in the area. Moreover, it provides us with fruitful results. To some extent, it would appear, each of the four variables may operate as a "substitute" for the other three. The fact that so gross an operation as simple addition provides so powerful an index is an indication of the still greater rewards that lie ahead when the measures can be refined through appropriate weighting. Psychic mobility, religious commitment, and orientation toward change had already been trichotomized. Educational attainment was also rescored from zero to two, making a range from zero to eight when the four variables were summed. The results of the summing process were as follows: TABLE 16. --Summed scores of four independent variables A B C 0220 3:14 6:31 1:18 4:24 7:12 2:13 31.2: 811 Total .53 .56 56 The scores were grouped as indicated in Table 16. The nature of groups A and C seemed clear; these were our traditionals and moderns. The nature of group B was, and is, more complex. Are we entitled to assume that these people are true transitionals, on the move from the old ways to the new? Shall we expect them to score midway between the traditionals and the moderns on the dependent variables? Such assumptions and expectations presuppose a theory . . . . 1 of transmon as process which we are not prepared to defend. Rather we would expect the members of this group, who partake he re of the old and there of the new, to be much less cohesive in their political behavior than the two extreme 1 See Chapter VII below for a more detailed discussion of this point. 76 groups. Some are, indeed, moving; others are immobile. Their ambivalence as individuals, and their ambiguity as a group, lead us to anticipate a greater scatter in their positions on the dependent variables than the other groups dis - play. We may hope, at best, that many of them will gravitate toward the middle positions on these variables. as they do on the traditional—modern continuum itsell'.. The problem,of course, is that it is always easier in social research to deal with the end points of a continuum than with its mid-section; pure types are more readily analyzed than mixtures . The difference between a score of two on our four variables-~the highest score in the traditional groui -— and a score of six, which is the lowest score in the modern group, is substantial. It is not so between the two of the traditional and the three of the transitional, or the five of the transitional and the six of the modern. Such differences may be incidental; we still slice with butter knives, not scalpels . Nevertheless, as the reader will now finally see for himself, the various statistical measures of association we use provide convincing proof that the association between position on the basic continuum and score on the dependent variables is quite high; transitionals, however much they scatter. do tend to bunch together in middle positions, and only rarely obscure other- wise meaningful associations. And so, at last, to our story. Cl-IAPTER IV POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR Are there significant differences in political attitudes and behavior among the three groups in the sample? Only if there are does it make Sense to proceed to a detailed account of the socio-psychological. characteristics typical of each. In this chapter we present the data which justify, as it were, the classification into traditional, transitional, and modern categories; in the chapters which follow, we explore the nature of each group separately. Attitudes and beliefs Our expectations, briefly restated, are as follows: because of their capacity to cope with change and diversity, moderns will be the most tolerant group, and hence most sensitive to civil Iibe rties; because of their higher socio-economic status and their greater sense of security, they will display the greatest political efficacy; because of their sophistication, they will be least prone to substitute authoritarian leadership for political parties .1 In each case, the traditional group will be most unlike the modern, and the transitional will fall somewhere between the two. Clyikliberties. --Of the two sets of items which measure sensitivity to civil liberties, the first produced rather inconclusive results, as shown in Table 17 . The set contains only four items, yet two failed to discriminate among 1 . 7 For the sources of these expectations, see supra, pp. 24-28. 78 the three groups in a convincing manner. The greatest difference occurs on the "non *kosher meat" item. lle re, evidently, use of the religious orthodoxy variable as part of the classificatory index has significantly affected the results. On the other hand, the distribution of responses to the "freedom of the press" item is virtually the same for each group. The phrasing of the item is probably at fault, since it is worded so positively that disagreement is difficult. From comments of respondents in explanation of their answers to this question, it would seem that a negatively worded statement, such as "censorship of news - papers should be increased, so that only the truth is printed,’ would have produced substantially more discriminating results . Similarly, the question regarding freedom of movement for the Arabs should not have been included in the interview schedule at all, since the lSSUL‘ it raises is exceedingly intricate. Israel's security situation is such that there may, in fact, be compelling justification for agreement that Arab movement should, at least in some cases, be restricted. Once the door is opened to a clear-and-present—danger doctrine, the validity of the item becomes questionable. Apparently, there is no dominant factor which controls response to the four civil liberties issues raised by these items. Rather, each item is evaluated independently of the others . Nevertheless, the combined scores for all four items do indicate a highly significant association between position on the traditional - modern continuum and sensitivity to civil liberties. TABLE 17. -- Civil liberties (1)8 79 Traditionals N = 53 Transitionals N = 56 Mode rns N = 56 Total N = 165 The Communist Party in Israel should have the same rights as all other parties. Agree Disagree .01