Rabbis in Israel, Public Relations and Advertising

This article discusses public relations (PR) and advertising in the work of the rabbi in Israel. The rabbi’s influence is felt within the religious population such as through the Sabbath sermon from the synagogue pulpit to congregants, but the media is an additional channel to spreading the rabbi’s religious message. The traditional, and secular Israeli Jewish population—as distinct from religiously observant (25 per cent of the Israeli Jewish population)—have no regular daily or weekly interaction with the synagogue, which raises the question of the rabbis using extra-synagogual channels to reach them, notably mass media channels. In order to throw light on rabbis’ attitudes to public relations, the author carried out a survey of Israeli rabbis. Overall, differences were found between rabbis’ attitudes to PR and actual practice. The actual appearance of rabbis in the media is less. In attitudinal terms, Haredi or ultra-Orthodox rabbis scored highly in rating the importance of PR, compared to rabbis from other streams, even though Haredi rabbis live in cultural ghettos and Jewish life for them is focused on the synagogue and Torah learning. Reaching beyond the pulpit was also important for the more intensive sub-stream of modern orthodoxy, “Hardal”. By corollary, it was surprising that PR among the non-Orthodox rabbis—notwithstanding that their arena of religious outreach was secular Israel—was rated lower.