I NSIGHT
ZE'EV CHAFETS
Israel Correspondent
ore than 10,000 Or-
thodox rabbis and
yeshiva students
packed the seats of Israel's
Yad Eliahu basketball
stadium on Monday night.
For most of them, it was
their first visit to the arena,
but they weren't there to see
Maccabi Tel Aviv in action.
They came, instead, to at-
tend the founding conference
of the Orthodox Degal
Hatorah Party, and to listen
to a rare public speech by its
unquestioned leader, 92-
year-old Rabbi Eliezer
Schach.
Rabbi Schach's audience
was made up entirely of men
in traditional black garb and
beards (women followed the
proceedings on two giant
television screens in
Jerusalem and Bnai Brak),
but it grabbed the attention
of the entire country. On the
day of the speech, Israel's
newspapers devoted their
front pages to the upcoming
event, and the national tele-
vision interrupted its
scheduled programs to carry
the address live.
The reason for this un-
precedented attention was
political — the Likud and
Labor parties are currently
deadlocked in their efforts to
set up a new government,
and Rabbi Schach, whose
followers have eight seats in
the 120 member Knesset,
holds the balance of power.
The rabbi was on record as
favoring the Likud, but
Labor was hoping that he
would change his mind. In-
stead, the Laborites received
a stinging rebuke from the
rabbi which could make it
impossible for Shimon Peres
to form a governing coali-
tion.
There was something
other-worldly about the
gathering. When Rabbi
Schach entered the building,
his followers greeted him
ecstatically, loudly chanting
psalms and prayers. Rabbi
Schach ignored the fervor.
He took his place on the
podium, opened a large book
and sat, lost in a Talmudic
text, while several Orthodox
politicians warmed up the
crowd. When he finally took
Peres hears from Yair Levy, Shas religious party member.
On Monday,
The Rabbi
Spoke Out
Rabbi Eliezer Schach appears to have
struck a fatal blow to Labor's chances to
form a new government.
the rostrum, he spoke in a
Yiddish-inflected, occa-
sionally ungrammatical
Hebrew that was difficult to
follow, and eventually
lapsed entirely into Yiddish.
If Rabbi Schach's oratory
was difficult to follow, his
message was crystal clear.
He began by asserting that
he would not discuss politics
and, strictly speaking, he
kept his word by avoiding
direct mention of the present
coalition negotiations. But,
in a plea for Orthodox piety
and tradition, he launched a
bitter attack against the left
wing.
"The Labor Party has cut
itself off from the Jewish
past," he said. "It has
broken its connection with
the past. They don't talk
about keeping Shabbos or
fasting on Yom Kippur.
What is the Labor Party? It
has a new Torah. In what
way is it Jewish? We must
separate ourselves from po-
litical parties who have no
connection with Judaism."
Rabbi Schach aimed some
of his sharpest barbs at the
kibbutzim. He accused them
of growing pigs and rabbits,
and told his listeners that he
had heard from kibbutz
members that they didn't
know the Sh'ma and feared
to even enter a synagogue.
"What kind of Jews are
these?", he demanded rhe-
torically. "In what way are
they Jews at all?"
Rabbi Schach, who has
dovish views on the future of
the West Bank and Gaza,
refrained from praising the
Likud, but his followers
made it clear that he prefers
the hawkish party because
of its greater respect for Jew-
ish tradition and religion.
"In fact, Rabbi Schach said
clearly that our place is with
the right wing, not the left
wing, because of the ideology
of the left," said Rabbi Yit-
zhak Peretz, Minister of
Immigrant Absorption.
The immediate political
repercussions of Monday
evening's meeting were
clear. Labor politicians pri-
vately conceded that,
without Rabbi Schach's sup-
port, they have a slim
chance of forming a new
government. Some, like MK
Chaim Ramon, raised the
possibility of new elections
in the next few months.
On the other side of the ai-
sle, Likud activists were en-
couraged, and now say that
they have a good chance to
set up a coalition. Party
leader Yitzhak Shamir
hopes to be able to coax
Agudat Yisrael, another Or-
thodox party currently sup-
porting Labor, into a new
government led by him.
Some observers here
believe that the importance
of Rabbi Schach's ap-
co
z pearance goes far beyond
cc current party negotiations,
however.
"Not since Agudat Yisrael
was founded in 1912, in
Europe, has there been such
a gathering," said Professor
Menachem Friedman of Bar
Ilan University. "We have
never seen anything like
this in Eretz Yisrael."
Indeed, the show of Or-
thodox force, and Rabbi
Schach's forceful anti-liberal
message, have sent shock
waves through Israel's most-
ly secular population.
Speaking on Army radio,
author Amos Oz called on
the fundamentalists to enter
a dialogue with the non-
religious minority and
warned of the dangers of
splitting the Jewish people.
Reserve army officers on
some kibbutzim threatened
to resign their commissions
and demanded that the Or-
thodox yeshiva students who
attended the meeting be
drafted into the army.
Some of Rabbi Schach's
followers seemed concerned
about a possible secular
backlash. "Our strength is
in our weakness," said
Rabbi Yisrael Eichler. "We
don't want to be forced to
decide between the major
parties. We just want the
autonomy we have had until
now, to live our lives in our
own way."
In fact, Rabbi Schach did
not call for any new religious
legislation, nor did he men-
tion the controversial Who Is
A Jew issue. Instead, both
his followers and the re-
ligious politicians of the
rival Agudat Yisrael party
have concentrated on
demands for more money for
Orthodox schools and hous-
ing projects.
That approach is paying
handsome dividends. This
year, 62 million shekels
were allocated in the na-
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
39