ABSTRACT
The cost of Israel's election campaign reached a new high in 1988, even though repeated findings have proved that the time and money invested in electioneering do not significantly change voting positions. Campaign communications, like other forms of political communication, frame and interpret information. The construction and interpretation of reality involves the use of political language that includes symbols, slogans, metaphors, name-calling, classification and catch-phrases. Symbols, like other social constructing devices, endow social experiences with meanings; they are laden with values and emotions. The ultra-Orthodox stream of Judaism began in Europe as a reaction to the modernization and secularization of Jews, on one hand, and the uprooting of Eastern European Jewry and its migration to the west, on the other. Thus, the ultra-Orthodox were originally entirely Ashkenazim. The chapter suggests that an additional dimension of analysis: the visual and verbal symbols used in the election campaign, which is an active arena for a symbolic contest.
