AG orders memorial event for late Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef be delayed until after election

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has ordered that a state-funded memorial event marking the death of former chief Sephardic rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who was the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, be delayed until after the October 27 over electioneering concerns.

The Shas-controlled Religious Affairs Ministry proposed to instead hold the gender-segregated event a week earlier, but was shot down by Baharav-Miara, according to the Haaretz daily, which notes the ministry and Jerusalem Municipality have staged the memorial at a cost of NIS 4 million the past two years.

In response, Shas rails at Baharav-Miara, claiming she is “serving the left to harm the memory” of Yosef, while the general-director of the Religious Affairs Ministry claims that a memorial rally for Yithak Rabin should also be cancelled because the assassinated prime minister was “a political person.” Unlike the memorial for Yosef, however, the event in Rabin Square isn’t set to be held until November and isn’t funded by the state.