Education, not ethnicity, drove Israeli radio listening in the 1950s.

Evidence

It appears that at least as much as ethnicity, education and the acquisition of general cultural literacy were powerful forces motivating Israelis to switch on the radio. In 1957, only 16 percent of oriental immigrants with a grade-school education listened regularly, as opposed to 56 percent with some secondary education. (The figures for Ashkenazic post-1945 immigrants were 48 percent and 76 percent respectively.) The conductors of the surveys of the 1950s found strong correlations among listening, newspaper reading, and attendance at the theater and cinema. Because by 1965, some 90 percent of Israeli Jews were listening to the radio regularly, and at that time some 40 percent of the population was of Middle Eastern origin, increasing numbers of oriental Jews were clearly engaged in various practices associated with cultural literacy. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 710

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to theories of cultural capital and literacy acquisition — Bourdieu’s habitus and mass communication studies. Also echoes Milgrom’s institutional-reputation work in that proxies (education) substitute for direct knowledge.