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1■
group of Sephardi Ortho-
dox teen-agers dressed in
dark suits, white shirts
and black hats were
hanging around in front of the
home of their revered. leader, 73-
year-old Rabbi Ovadia Yosef,
the former Sephardi chief rab-
bi who heads the Shas party.
They were waiting — in vain,
as it turned out — for the West
Bank settlers to come back and
resume their sit-in protest.
A couple of nights before, the
teen-agers had been on hand
when about 300 of their cohorts
had beaten up a couple dozen
settlers, sending a few to the
hospital, and burning their
chairs and tables.
"It was a beautiful thing,"
said Yossi Sis, one of the
Sephardi boys. "We're with Ray
Ovadia through fire and flood."
These are the yoi mg hotheads
of Shas (Sephardi Torah
Guardians), the party that gives
the Rabin coalition government
its slight majority, and which is
using that leverage, once again,
to force Mr. Rabin to do its bid-
ding on pain of giving up pow-
er. (The protesters want Shas to
leave the coalition and thus put
a halt to the peace negotiations.)
The latest government crisis
hasn't settled, but it appears
that Shas will emerge with its
greatest moral and parliamen-
tary victory yet — the removal
of the party's secular nemesis,
Shulamit Aloni, from her post
as education minister.
Shas has no great love for the
peace process, or for any other
government policy. It sat com-
fortably in the previous Likud
government, and went without
hesitation into the Labor-Meretz
coalition. Shas goes where the
money and power are. As a
chozer b'tshuvah (newly peni-
tent) devotee of Rabbi Yosef put
it, "the only thing that concerns
Ray Ovadia is building more
synagogues and yeshivas."
Rabbi Yosefs word is absolute
law in Shas; the party joins gov-
ernments on his command, and
will quit on his command. With
Shas threatening to bring down
the coalition every few months
over some religious slight, this
makes the Iraqi-born Rabbi
Yosef, already One of the great-
est Torah sages alive, also one
of the most powerful political fig-
ures in Israel — certainly the
one with the most loyal follow-
ing.
His power to topple the coali-
tion is what compels Mr. Rabin
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to put on a yarmulke and come
to his home from time to time,
to stay in the rabbi's good
graces. His power has drawn
settlers to sit with placards in
front of his home for the last few
weeks, in the hope of convincing
Rabbi Yosef to bring down the
government and remove the
danger that it will relinquish
parts of Eretz Israel in the peace
talks.
Last Saturday night, in his
weekly Torah sermon at a syn-
agogue in one of his power
bases, Jerusalem's Bukharan
Quarter, Rabbi Y_osef wept from
the podium. The settlers'
demonstration had made his life
Shas is by far the
largest, most
powerful Orthodox
party in the country.
a hell, he said; it had left his wife
trembling with fear. Wearing
his trademark purple, gold- em-
broidered robe, Rabbi Yosef told
the congregation, "They will be
damned in the daytime and
damned in the nighttime."
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri,
Rabbi Yosefs leading disciple,
said, "If I weren't a busy politi-
cian, I would protest myself
against the damage they've
done to Ray Ovadia."
The young men in the audi-
ence had heard their cue. "Ray
Ovadia didn't tell us to do it; it
was all done by our own initia-
tive," said Yossi Sis and his
friends. The hundreds of Shas
supporters rode over to Rabbi
Yosef's house and lit into the
settlers, grappling also with the
police who tried to stop them.
"You know those Westerns
when the Indians come riding
in? That's what it was like," said
Rabbi Menachem Felix of the
West Bank settlement of Elon
Moreh, who was kicked and
beaten all over his body. "They
shouted, `Ray Ovadia says
you're dead; you won't live out
the night; you won't live out the
morning.' " Rabbi Yosef even-
tually stopped the riot by or-
dering his followers to go home,
and Mr. Deri later criticized the
violence, but Rabbi Felix filed a
police complaint against the
two, accusing them of inciting
to commit murder.
Shas got over 150,000 votes I
in the last election; its greatest
strength is in the Orthodox
Sephardi neighborhoods of