Such superstition also brings voters to Shas. Or so, at least, its detractors claim. But the party’s true believers say the political establishment is using the party’s unconventional methods as a pretext for persecuting its leaders. With campaigning underway for the May 17 elections, the fight took center stage last week when Shas leader Aryeh Deri, the kingmaker in the last several coalition governments, was convicted of taking $155,000 in bribes, fraud and breach of trust. Deri’s conviction serves only to further polarize Israel’s secular and religious voters.
The ultra-Orthodox party, which since 1984 has represented Sephardic Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin, clearly has mastered the art of mixing its ethnic politics with religion. Critics say selling letters allows Shas to make political gain from the superstitious notions of people like Cohen. Shas used to distribute amulets, tiny bottles of oil or pieces of parchment blessed by the party’s rabbis, which it said would bring God’s blessing in return for a vote for Shas. “It was an extortion,” says Hava Segev, a Shas voter in the poor Negev town of Netivot. Shas got a record 10 Knesset seats at the last election, making it the third-largest bloc and the biggest religious party. Last fall, Israel’s courts banned amulets, likening the practice to vote-buying. So Shas has found another way to bestow the blessings of its rabbis on ordinary people–the Torah letters.
Shas has built its power stoking Sephardic resentment over discrimination by European Ashkenazic Jews in the early years of the Jewish state. “Even today, people in the Labor Party believe that we are primitive, that we come from the Third World,” says Shlomo Benizri, a senior Shas legislator. “They say many ugly things about us.” Party leader Deri is the master of such rhetoric, but he also set up a network of 1,800 free schools and kindergartens to attract even secular Sephardic voters to Shas. Still, Deri stands convicted of using his position as Interior minister to funnel money to yeshivas run by Shas supporters and, in return, receiving holidays and cash bribes that paid for a big house in Jerusalem and a Jacuzzi. Hardly what you’d expect from a man who cast himself as Rabbi Robin Hood. Yet outside the Jerusalem District Court last week, supporters prayed loudly for Deri and handed out buttons bearing his face and the slogan strong and blessed. “We have Sephardic pride because of Deri,” says Israel Ochana, a Shas activist in the crowd. “The voters are not stupid. They will see how the Ashkenazis were determined to squeeze the juice out of our hero.”
Deri is still a member of Parliament and the leader of Shas. Deri, who continues to assert his innocence, is appealing his conviction, for which he could be sentenced to up to seven years in jail. His appeal will probably not be heard until after the election. Until then, the candidates must try to support the rule of law without alienating voters for whom Deri is a martyr. “Deri is an extremely clever politician, and he has decided the best way to get off the hook is to turn this personal problem into a religious and ethnic issue,” says Rabbi David Golinkin, head of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of gullible people who will fall for that trick.” And so far, Deri’s political calculations usually have proven astute.
