The aus­ter­i­ty pro­gram, which includ­ed food, cloth­ing, and shoes rationing, caused hard­ships on the pop­u­la­tion and the growth of the black mar­ket, result­ing in increased anger with the rul­ing left-wing MAPAI Par­ty and the strength­en­ing of indi­vid­ual self-inter­est, main­ly of house­wives, who had to make ends meet, since they were the ones who were respon­si­ble for their fam­i­lies’ imme­di­ate needs for food and cloth­ing. Rozin shows how this influ­enced nation­al elec­tions and the rise of the cen­tral lean­ing, mid­dle class Gen­er­al Zion­ists Par­ty. The last part exam­ines how old-timers viewed the immi­grants, and espe­cial­ly those from the Islam­ic world, reflect­ing cul­tur­al bias and feel­ings of supe­ri­or­i­ty. This is an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion not only to the social and polit­i­cal devel­op­ments of Israel in the peri­od imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing inde­pen­dence, but also point­ing to the roots of changes in the fol­low­ing decades. Index, notes, references.