Lessons from Shas about Israel

Abstract

This article focuses on the Israeli ethno-religious party Shas and its role in the Israeli social and political structure. It is argued that while Shas functions successfully in Israel's Western-style political system, it does so as a more typical party. Thus understanding the context within which Shas operates and its relation to political and societal divisions offers an insight into Israeli society and its political system.The aim of this article is twofold: the exploration of Shas as a political party and its place within the Israeli political system and, by implication, what this reveals about the Israeli state and society. This article seeks to present a systematic analysis of the English-language literature on Shas and its place within the wider Israeli polity. This is significant because Shas represents many of the key divisions within Israeli society. Furthermore, it reflects the failure of secular Zionist ideology to find resonance among the large post-1948 wave of Jewish immigrants from the Middle East who did not share the same intellectual history or suffer the same types of persecution as their coreligionists in Europe.By the 1970s, many Israelis from these Middle Eastern Jewish communities had mobilized along an ethno-religious cleavage in a way previously unseen in Israeli politics. This crystallized in the 1984 establishment of the Worldwide Sephardic Association of Torah Guardians (known by its Hebrew acronym, Shas), which resembles a Middle Eastern political party or movement, but operates within Israel's Western-style political system. Shas constitutes an ideal case study to analyze Israeli society, as the party's support reflects the complexity of Israeli society on two levels. First, it represents what was a new division in the form of overt intra-Jewish ethnic competition. Second, its political success revitalized and arguably exacerbated the existing secular/ religious cleavage. While one must acknowledge that the most prevalent ethnic division is between Arab and Jewish Israelis,1 there are other cleavages worthy of mention. There is an internal Jewish ethnic division between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews that is important for understanding Israeli society and politics, as well as cleavages between secular and religious Jews, between the core and the periphery, and along class lines (all of which are reflected in the Sephardic/Ashkenazic divide).However Shas is not simply a response to divisions in Israeli society. It is also a party that has been built on deep cultural identity,2 which means Shas is more than a political party and in many respects resembles a social movement.3 The durability of Shas depends on deep cultural links that are well-established in the community and that exist outside of wider divisions in Israeli society. Therefore, Shas and its institutions resemble a social movement and a manifestation of what Myriam Charbit called identity clientelism where the party, institutions, and the community form a mutually reinforcing nexus. 4 Yet Shas is indeed a political party and operates within a structured party system. This article aims to focus on Shas within this context - as a political party, rather than on its broader social realm.As a political party, Shas draws on two distinct but interrelated identities to mobilize voters. Firstly, at the core of Shas and its most influential constituency are ultra-Orthodox Jews, who account for a third of Shas's vote.5 Ultra-Orthodox voters differ from other religious voters in Israel in that they are primarily guided by their religious leaders and a strict social conservatism, concerns that dwarf all other ideological considerations like nationalism and security.6 Shas's position as a representative for the interests of ultra-Orthodox voters manifests itself in its seeking government support and funding for its institutions, which are primarily educational and religious. The use of this funding in some respects constitutes a clientelist relationship,7as it is based on the principle that political support for Shas is rewarded with support for religious institutions. …