After gay wedding statement, Shas’s Yigal Guetta resigns — or does he?

Shas lawmaker Yigal Guetta stirred up a sleepy political system on Monday with his public bragging that he had attended his nephew’s gay wedding two years ago.

The ultra-Orthodox MK’s announcement drew the predictable reproaches from his community’s rabbis, and the lawmaker announced in a letter to his party’s chief, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, that he would resign his position in the Knesset.

Or did he?

According to Channel 2, Guetta sent a resignation letter to Deri, but not to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, who must receive a formal resignation announcement from an MK before the resignation becomes official.

By law, Shas can kick Guetta — the party’s secretary-general, to be sure — out of the party, but it can’t kick him out of the Knesset. Once a Knesset member is elected, only a large majority of fellow lawmakers, backed by an Ethics Committee decision and a very serious breach of the law on his or her part can force them from parliament.

One report now says Guetta will announce his decision “at Rosh Hashana,” the Jewish new year that begins next Wednesday evening.

Guetta’s daughter Simcha said in a Channel 10 television interview earlier this evening that she was “proud of her father, a man who lives in light and not in darkness, and who follows his truth wherever it may lead.

“What did he do? Went to the wedding of his nephew. It doesn’t matter if you’re religious or secular, you should love and respect other people,” she added.

Oh, and by the way, she adds casually, “This nation needs unity, it needs people like him in politics. He’s a strong spokesman for this nation. [In an election,] he could bring four Knesset seats all by himself.”

Are we witnessing the founding of a gay-friendly spinoff of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party?