Can the Shas Party’s fresh lineup rally the Sephardic masses?

Photos: Elchanan Kotler

A few weeks before Israel’s fourth elections, the flat-screen in the Knesset lobby shows that the building is almost empty, so finding three Shas MKs sitting together in a room shouldn’t take too much sleuthing.

Along the way to the party’s faction room there’s abundant evidence of the pandemic stalking the land. The long corridors are no longer filled with hurrying aides; galleries are shrouded in plastic sheeting; and cafeterias are stripped of tables and bereft of political chatter.

Even reaching the bottom floor of the Knesset building, all evidence of Shas is gone. The door to the party’s committee room is open, the large oval table is still there, but the massive portraits of Rav Ovadiah Yosef have vanished. Instead of the expected Shas MKs are functionaries from the election committee who don’t bother to glance up from their computers.

Finally, it’s several minutes past the time for our scheduled meeting when it turns out that the trio happen to be working their phones in the depths of a darkened conference room upstairs these days.

“We’re Knesset members,” Micha’el Malkieli’s impish greeting comes out of the gloom, as Moshe Arbel and Yossi Tayb join in, “you think we have all day?”

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Welcome to the world of Generation Shas. Three very different politicians, with varied backgrounds, but all children of Rav Ovadiah’s Torah revolution. Coming from careers at the intersection of kiruv and local activism, they’ve been propelled into national politics while just in their thirties, as part of Aryeh Deri’s drive to remake the movement of “Maran.”

“The fact that I’m here today shows that they succeeded,” says Malkieli, 38, the leader of the three, who was transfixed as a child by Rav Ovadiah’s legendary shiurim in Jerusalem’s Moussaioff shul. “I can remember Maran comparing the small handful of yeshivot we had with the massive Ashkenazi yeshivah world.”

Born in middle-class Petach Tikvah, Moshe Arbel, one year older, went to local yeshivos while maintaining a similar Shas family affiliation, before rising through the ranks as Aryeh Deri’s chief of staff. And Yossi Tayb, raised in Sarcelles, a Parisian suburb, joined Rav Ovadiah’s live-streamed shiurim as they were beamed into France in the ‘90s — an influence he credits with the local community’s Torah revival.

Despite the dimness of the large conference room, now bereft of the iconic meetings serviced by drinks-bearing ushers, the freshmen MKs are identifiable by their neckties alone.

The jaunty angle of his green tie proclaims Malkieli’s yeshivish identity as a Chevron graduate; the precision of Moshe Arbel’s blue number speaks of his legal background; and a certain je ne sais quoi is a dead giveaway for Yossi Tayb’s French heritage.

But if the three are cut from the same cloth, the sartorial differences point to Aryeh Deri’s strategy. In his quest to remake the party for a new generation, the Shas leader has axed the old-timers — retiring deputy Finance Minister Yitzchak Cohen and MK Yaakov Margi, both Knesset veterans whose removal this election cycle at what seemed to be the height of their influence, came as a surprise. In their places, Deri has given eight of the top ten spots on the list to Shasniks in their thirties. His focus has been to bring in people with new expertise and who can tap fresh demographics.

Our conversation provides a ringside view of young politicians finding their footing in Israel’s big leagues and climbing the greasy political pole, highlighting the interdependence of Torah and political activism in the country. We touch on flashpoint topics like police violence and chareidi responsibility under coronavirus. But the talk — interrupted by parliamentary aides and buzzing phones — also raises questions about Deri’s long-term strategy.

As they strain to bring in new voters, can the increasingly chareidi-leaning Shas party — which had previously gotten its strength from a traditional Sephardi voter public — truly become a national force again? The MKs are reluctant to be drawn into a numbers-game about who will form the next government, but how can they prevent the draining of vast numbers of potential Shas votes to the juggernaut called Bibi? And talented as these proud Shasnikim are, is Deri indeed building up successors, or simply cementing his long-term dominance of the movement?