Shas spiritual leader: Edelstein’s soul is an abomination, shame he came to Israel

Former chief Sephardic rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, on Thursday called Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Yuli Edelstein “wicked” for demanding tough sanctions on yeshiva students who evade military service.

The comments came hours after Yosef reportedly ordered Shas to sharpen its threats to bring down the government if the Haredi draft exemption is not codified.

“His soul is an abomination,” said Yosef, in footage published by Haredi news outlet Kol BaRama from a gathering in Beit Shemesh, which has a large ultra-Orthodox community.

Yosef, who also took aim at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the premier and Edelstein, both members of the Likud party, belong to a “false right wing. Wicked scoundrels.”

Yosef, who has made several controversial statements against Haredi enlistment to the IDF, said of Edelstein: “He was a prisoner of Zion and came to Israel. It’s a shame he came to Israel, he should have stayed there. He’s causing trouble for the yeshiva students.”

Edelstein, whose committee is currently revising a government-backed law that would reportedly sanction Haredi draft evaders, is a former prisoner of Zion, or Soviet refusenik, who spent three years in Siberian labor camps for teaching Hebrew in the 1980s.

Refuseniks were typically jailed by the Soviet Union for Zionist activity, especially fighting for the right to move to Israel. In 2020, when he was still chief rabbi, Yosef said immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union are “religion-hating gentiles.”

Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz, who has called for Haredim who avoid the draft to be penalized, wrote on X on Thursday that Yosef crossed a “moral, Jewish, Zionist” red line by calling elected officials “wicked scoundrels” and saying it was “shame” that a prisoner of Zion had come to Israel.

“I myself came to Israel out of a sense of mission,” wrote Illouz, who was born to Moroccan Jewish parents in Montreal. “Hearing such words from a religious leader is painful.”

“As someone who was raised on the teachings of the Sephardic sages… I ask in pain: What happened to Sephardic moderation?” Illouz said, adding: “Shas of today, and Sephardic Jewish tradition, have nothing in common.”

Hebrew media reported Wednesday that Shas was joining a threat by its Ashkenazi counterpart, United Torah Judaism, to vote in favor of the government’s dissolution.

There has been no public comment from Shas on the developments, although it has been coordinating its efforts with UTJ in recent weeks, with both parties having engaged in a partial legislative boycott of the coalition in an effort to exert pressure on Netanyahu.

With only seven Knesset seats, UTJ on its own does not have the ability to bring down the government, as Netanyahu’s coalition currently holds 68 out of 120 seats. Shas’s cooperation would topple the government, triggering early elections. The next election is formally set for October 2026.

In a bid to forestall elections, which he is projected to lose, Netanyahu was holding intensive meetings with Edelstein and the Haredi political leadership on Wednesday and Thursday.

Ultra-Orthodox parties have been seeking to codify their community’s exemption from the draft since last June, when the High Court of Justice ruled that there was no legal basis for the exemption. The ruling led the IDF to begin efforts to conscript tens of thousands of previously exempt men into the military, although few have joined.

One of the central obstacles in negotiations for a new bill has been Edelstein’s insistence on sanctions against draft evaders. According to a Wednesday report by Haredi news site Kikar Hashabbat, the penalties include blocking draft evaders from traveling abroad, obtaining a driver’s license, and receiving certain social benefits.

Netanyahu has reportedly been considering replacing Edelstein as chairman of the powerful Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, but ultra-Orthodox political figures have rejected the move, believing it would deepen opposition to the bill.

Netanyahu previously removed IDF chief Herzi Halevi and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant from their posts due to their opposition to a lenient Haredi draft bill, according to recordings of the premier revealed by Channel 13 on Wednesday.

Currently, approximately 80,000 Haredi men between the ages of 18 and 24 are eligible for military service and have not enlisted, even as reservists have completed hundreds of days of service since the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.

The army has stated that it is facing a manpower shortage and currently needs some 12,000 new soldiers — 7,000 of whom would be combat troops.

Haredi opponents of the draft argue that it would cripple Torah scholarship and lead to mass secularization of ultra-Orthodox recruits. Ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students have held mass, sometimes violent protests against enlistment, including one on Thursday that blocked Route 4 in central Israel.

Following the launch of an ultra-Orthodox recruitment program last month, Yosef threatened that the community would leave the country en masse if required to enlist. MK Avigdor Liberman, head of the hawkish-secularist Yisrael Beytenu, filed a criminal complaint against Yosef for the threat.

Yosef made an identical threat in March 2023, months before the end of his tenure as chief rabbi. He was succeeded by his brother David Yosef. Their father, Ovadia Yosef, who served as Sephardic chief rabbi in the 1970s, had founded the Shas party.