Training Grounds
Schools, social service network help
propel Shas'politicalpower.
AVI MACHLIS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jerusalem
hen the 24 first-graders in black kip-
pot (skullcaps) and curly peyot (side
curls) chant the traditional grace
after meals at Talmud Torah
Habayit Hayehudi, their elementary school in
downtown Jerusalem, they speak in one voice.
Their parents, said Rabbi Shlomo Sharabi, the
school's 30-year-old principal, also spoke as one
voting in Israel's elections last month. By doing
so, they helped boost the Shas political parry
from 10 seats to 17 in Israel's 120-seat Knesset.
"We do not recruit children to get votes. We
want them to become devout, observant Jews, "
said Sharabi, noting that most of his students'
parents have become haredi, or fervently
Orthodox, over the past few years. "Once they
become haredi, their families know by themselves
to vote for Shas."
Since Shas was created in 1984 and won its
first four Knesset seats, the parry has gained
acclaim for its shrewd political dealings.
W
/-
First-graders chant the grace after meals
at an elementary school run by Shas
in downtown Jerusalem.
TRAINING GROUNDS on page 26
The Company He Keeps
NECHEMIA MEYERS
Special to the Jewish News
Jerusalem
oon after Ehud Barak was
elected prime minister of
Israel, the Dan chain sent out
a press release boasting of the
fact that Barak had used one of its
luxurious hotels to hold his immediate
post-election victory celebration.
After some corn-
mentators pointed
News
out that a significant
Analysis
percentage of those
who were admitted to
the celebration are members of Israel's
monied elite, Barak undertook a num-
ber of corrective measures. First, he
held a highly publicized meeting with
a representative of Israel's unemployed;
S
then he moved the coalition talks
from a luxury hotel to public build-
ings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
What Barak hasn't altered is his
tendency to hobnob with the wealthy
businessmen who were, and are,
among his strongest supporters.
Barak isn't setting a precedent. His
Labor Parry predecessors behaved in
exactly the same way. Yet perhaps the
time has come to look again at this
practice in view of the fact that so
many lower-income Israelis, obviously
alienated from the veteran parties, are
turning for succor to Shas — a party
widely criticized as being corrupt and
anti-democratic.
Hdaretz newspaper columnist Arie
Caspi pointed out that Shas has
extracted enormous sums of money
from the government to establish its
rapidly expanding network of cut-rate
social and educational services. He
suggested that these services are not
the only key to the party's success.
"Shas," he wrote, "offers some-
thing that no secular organization
provides; an alternative value system.
A society that emphasizes competi-
tion and success has no solution for
those at the bottom of the social lad-
der, and people are unwilling to
placidly accept a system that declares
them worthless.
"Thus, they are attracted to the
ultra-Orthodox world-view that all are
equal before the Creator, and if there
is any difference between people it lies
in the power of their faith. So the
Ashkenazi elite is in no way superior
to the poor manual workers in devel-
opment towns," Caspi wrote.
The electoral prowess of parties
that feed on the bitterness of losers is
not unique to Shas or Israel. Juan and
Eva Peron, after all, were successful
because of their appeal to the shirtless
ones.
And the Perons, like convicted Shas
leader Aryeh Deri and his friends,
won great popularity because they
used some of the money they accumu-
lated by less than kosher means to
provide goodies for the working class,
while not forgetting to feather their
own nests at the same time.
If Labor — now called One Israel
— is to stem the Shas tide it will have
to show genuine concern for "the
shirtless ones" of this country, people
who have never entered one of the
Dan Hotels except as housemaids and
busboys. Fl
6/4
199c,
Detroit Jewish News
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