A wiser, optimistic Deri with the editors of Mishpacha’s Hebrew-language edition. “Believe me, I would be only too happy to see others capable of replacing me” (Photos Ezra Trabelsi, Flash90)

As 5779 dawns, Minister Aryeh Deri has precious little to complain about. Still battling adversity that’s followed him even after his return to politics in 2011, it seems he’s finally reached his plateau of inner peace. The Shas party, which he received in a state of division and disunity, has reverted back to being a one-leader party — just the way he likes it. The education institutions under his charge are thriving and expanding; he has two major portfolios as Minister of the Interior and Minister of Development of the Negev and Galilee, the police investigations are just about behind him, and recent polls show the party picking up and passing the minimum election threshold.

Just a year ago, he was battered in the polls and in the headlines, due to party infighting and a slew of police investigations into his personal wealth — at the beginning of the year, polls showed that Shas wouldn’t pass the electoral threshold, as Deri found himself under investigation for alleged money laundering, fraud, tax offenses, and breach of trust. He always maintained his innocence, though, and arrived to our interview cool, calm, and confident, full of optimism, and with a clear working plan for the coming year. He laments the conflicts within the various coalition parties preventing the removal of the looming draft law from the Knesset agenda, but as someone who’s been through the political gamut, Deri is confident that with a little patience, it too will work out in the end.

When Aryeh Deri was just 29, he became the youngest interior minister in Israel’s history. Over the years, he would serve as a minister under prime ministers from both the right and left. From the four seats with which his Shas party began in 1984, Shas’s influence skyrocketed, gaining a whopping 17 seats in the 1999 elections — despite investigations that began to plague Deri. But a jail term and a statute prohibiting him for reentering politics were behind him when he reentered the Knesset in 2013 — perhaps no longer the idol of the Sephardi street but a seasoned, more subdued Deri. While a lot of the magic has faded and Deri has spent the last five years jockeying for position as the party’s undisputed leader, he’s been tenaciously hanging on, still fighting to recapture the old energy even as Shas is forced to contend with new competitors to remain relevant.

As a new year begins, Deri is hopeful as ever that both he, and the entire chareidi constituency, will reap the dividends of a strong front.

Since your return to politics, people like to compare the first era to the second. What would you say is the biggest achievement you’ve brought chareidi Jewry since returning for round two?

The gist of it, I think, is that five years after the great vacuum that Maran Rav Ovadiah Yosef left, we can say that we’ve succeeded in preserving his life’s work, which, by the way, wasn’t really about politics at all. He didn’t establish Shas for the sake of generating political positions, but to increase Torah and glorify it, and to provide Jewish education for anyone who wanted it. And baruch Hashem, the chinuch network — the project that was most precious to his heart — has doubled in the last five years, not only in quantity but also in quality. Baruch Hashem, there is an extensive tutoring program, programs for at-risk youth, and many other initiatives that have expanded the borders of holiness, and that’s by far the most important thing — the reason we were sent in the first place.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 729)