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Accents In Needlepoint Contemporary Designs 626-3042 Rochelle limber's Knit, Knit, Kn t 855-2114 In Orchard Mall West Bloomfield 41 121■16 111 . — 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 - Mack Pitt AND HIS ORCHESTRA 358-3642 Combo • Big Band Find It All In The Jewish News Classifieds Call 354-5959 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