'We Too Are Judges': Law, Culture, and Society in Israeli Educational Television in the 1970s

Abstract

Researchers of television and culture have focused in recent years on the creative output of Israeli Educational Television (1966-2018). Its productions, primarily during the early decades of activity, have been shown to be important television creations which shed light on the changing character of Israeli society. The article examines the interplay of law, culture, and society in the 1970s as reflected in the program We Too Are Judges (broadcast from 1974 until the late 1970s). Each episode began with a short fictional film that presented an ethical dilemma, followed by an in-studio ‘trial’ with a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and five judges, all of them teenagers, moderated by the philosopher Yosef Ben-Shlomo, acting as Chief Judge. The first part of the article reconstructs the program’s production and broadcasting history. The second part, which describes the conduct of the ‘court’, shows that the creators understood early on that the short films, which were characterized by a complex plot and artistic subtlety could not easily accommodate the legal procedure forced on the program. In the third part of the article, it is claimed that the choice of a legal format – despite its shortcomings – was based on three cultural processes that were dominant during that decade: the Americanization of Israeli culture, the ‘judicialization’ of public life in Israel and the growing interest in Jewish law. The final part of the article illustrates how the social range presented in the program – both in the makeup of its participants and the subjects dealt with – gradually expanded and thus reflected the social changes occurring in Israel during that decade.