Shas hints at support for Bismuth’s bill regulating Haredi conscription

By Sam Sokol 19 November 2025, 2:56 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Shas party chief Aryeh Deri at the scene of suspected arson at a Jerusalem synagogue on June 8, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The rabbinic leadership of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party appears to strongly imply that it may support a government-backed bill regulating the conscription of Haredim.

In a front-page letter published in party mouthpiece HaDerech, Shas’s Council of Torah Sages bemoans what it describes as the shameful persecution of yeshiva students — which it says mainly affects members of the Sephardic community — and calls for a day of prayer on Thursday.

The council argues that rather than arresting draft dodgers, a Jewish state should pass legislation “that anyone who has the privilege of dedicating their lives to studying Torah, for the sake of all of Israel, will certainly be assisted suitably in whatever they need.”

Lashing out at those reporting “lies and deceit” regarding divisions within the party, the council says it backs the party’s MKs, “emissaries who faithfully do holy work, in full obedience to… our instructions,” as well as party chairman Aryeh Deri, “the valiant and active chairman of the holy movement.”

The members of Shas’s ruling Council of Torah Sages have reportedly been deeply divided over the legislation, while there have also been reports of significant differences of opinion between the rabbis and Deri.

In recordings recently published by Channel 12, senior members of the council, which ostensibly controls the party and has the final say over policy issues, were heard complaining that Deri had packed the panel with people outside the inner circle who maintain a more accommodationist approach than hardliners like Rabbi Moshe Maya or former chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef.

In an interview with the Knesset Channel last Tuesday, Shas MK Yaakov Margi asserted that his party supported the bill — which he said had been drafted in collaboration with Shas negotiator Ariel Attias — prompting pushback within the ultra-Orthodox faction and leading him to issue a clarification that the matter was still being considered by Shas’s rabbinic leadership, without whom no final decision will be made.

Speaking with The Times of Israel on Wednesday, a senior Shas figure stated that the party had “signaled a long time ago that it is in favor” of the bill.