Shas chief Deri and spiritual leader Yosef mend fences after reported major rift

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri and the party’s senior spiritual leader, former chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, ironed out their differences during a meeting today, several days after the Haaretz daily reported that Yosef had privately urged associates and students not to vote for the ultra-Orthodox party in the upcoming election.

According to the ultra-Orthodox news site Kikar Hashabbat, Yosef came with a letter from Rabbi Moshe Maya, a senior member of the party’s ruling Council of Torah sages, calling for Yosef to take over implementing the legacy of his father, Shas founder Ovadia Yosef.

The pair agreed to meet every Friday to discuss leadership issues, indicating a shared control over the party’s direction, while Yosef explicitly called on the public to support Shas, the Haredi news site reports.

Last week, Haaretz cited an unnamed student who said that Yosef had demanded he promise he wouldn’t vote for Shas and ask his family and the public not to vote for the party.

According to the report, Yosef has lost faith in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing religious bloc after it failed to pass a law codifying longstanding exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men from mandatory military service.

Yosef denied the report.

During his discussion with Deri, Yosef also praises Israel’s soldiers, blessing them and calling them divine messengers in a video released by a party spokesman.

“We love the soldiers, we love the entire Jewish nation. But it must be known that the Torah goes hand in hand with the soldiers. It is impossible without the Torah. People sometimes do not understand this,” Yosef states. “On this occasion, I bless all the soldiers: May the Holy One, Blessed be He, guard their comings and goings, may no harm befall them, and may they all return to their homes safe and healthy and continue to protect the people of Israel. They are messengers of the Holy One, Blessed be He, to protect the people of Israel.”

“We take care of the soldiers by having Torah, because the Torah protects the soldiers and protects the entire Jewish people” and, as such, “both the Torah and the soldiers” are necessary, the rabbi says.

Yosef’s comments follow years of harsh anti-conscription rhetoric, including calling on yeshiva students to flush draft orders down the toilet and threatening a mass exodus of Haredi Jews from the country should the government arrest yeshiva students for evasion.

He has also blamed the deaths of IDF troops in Gaza on Haredi yeshiva students’ insufficient Torah study, called a fellow rabbi and bereaved father of a slain soldier a heretic for advocating Haredi conscription, and called June’s US-Iran deal a divine punishment for Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s efforts to crack down on draft dodgers.