Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Shas has stormed back, jumping from nine to 11 seats in the elections 

A man walks into an Israeli polling station, takes a blue envelope, and heads behind the partition. With his jeans, polo shirt, and bare head, he could be any secular, middle-class Israeli, but his darker skin hints to a Sephardic background.

His fingers hover over the white voting slips. “Shas” reads one, but the man continues as if unsure, glancing first at the “Machal” of the Likud, and “Tes” of Itamar Ben Gvir.

He rubs the back of his head, and raises his hand to his face, thinking, before stretching out to grab the Ben Gvir option.

Suddenly music plays and a spectral apparition of Rav Ovadiah Yosef appears. Shocked, the man blurts out, “Kevod Harav!”

The voter spills his story of being torn between Shas and other right-wing parties, to which Rav Ovadiah responds in loving tones.

“My son, listen to me, I want what’s good for you in This World and the Next. Our entire purpose is to do the Will of Hashem, to strengthen emunah, to strengthen the mitzvot. Vote for Shas!”

The man takes a Shas slip, and placing his hand over his head like a kippah, sends the envelope into the blue ballot box.

Released days before last week’s seismic elections, the above video clip — which like much of Shas’s slick campaign went viral — is a good starting point to understand the meteoric comeback of the Shas party and its leader, Aryeh Deri.

Just a few years ago, Shas was derided as a has-been. Riven by internal rivalries, bleeding voters to the Likud, and — in the wake of Rav Ovadiah’s passing — bereft of its giant founder, the party seemed destined to be relegated to the status of a Sephardi version of the Agudah-Degel tie-up.

But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Shas has stormed back, jumping from nine to 11 seats in the elections — even while fending off the encroachment of Itamar Ben Gvir’s party. The 390,000 voters that the party attracted almost match the record from 1999, when a black-bearded Deri led Shas to 17 Knesset seats.

Like the fictional voter of the party’s digital campaign, many former Shas supporters — those swayed by the siren song of the other right-wing parties — found themselves voting Rav Ovadiah inside the polling booth.