A political plot to silence racism in ultra-Orthodox society
Opinion: A recent offer by United Torah Judaism to join forces with Shas is being lobbied as the future of Haredi coexistence; but its true aim is to crush a 35-year-old struggle against both ingrained Ashkenazi racism and the exclusion of Sephardic Jews in this community.
In recent weeks, after election polling started to emerge, an idea to unify all ultra-Orthodox parties started gaining momentum. Such a move would see the United Torah Judaism party, which represent various different Hasidic groups and the Lithuanian Orthodox public, and Shas, which represents the Mizrahi religious public, would reside under one roof.
That’s not all: this newly united ultra-Orthodox party would also absorb Eli Yishai, former Shas head who formed his own party, and the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalemites. Yes, the same Jerusalemite extremists that most of the ultra-Orthodox public has shunned.
But why unite now? Shas was initially established in the 1980s because of racism its Mizrachi public had suffered at the hands of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox leadership.
Knesset members from the Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah factions that make up United Torah Judaism, have been repeating messages about the importance of a union over and over for the past two weeks. They tell anyone who will listen how this consolidation would bring love and fellowship in the ultra-Orthodox sector. Some even went so far as to call the prospective union “the big Haredi bang,” or “the days of the Messiah.”
But behind theses slogans lies great hypocrisy, demonstrated perfectly by the October municipal elections that revealed raging racism in Haredi cities. Not to mention racism in educational institutions, that leave hundreds of Mizrahi ultra-Orthodox girls with no institution to attend— until the media or Mizrahi public leaders intervene.
These were the exact reasons why the Shas party was created to begin with.
Racism against Sephardic Jews among the general public has lessened since the 1980s, but it never truly disappeared. In fact, among the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox public it only strengthened. In many Haredi cities, the Ashkenazi public prevents Mizrahi families from residing in their buildings and calls them by derogatory names.
As a journalist who works in the Haredi world, I experienced racism from my Ashkenazi colleagues more than once. Even when I cover Knesset events as a political writer, I am sometimes met with disrespect from public servants and their team, just because I’m a modern Mizrahi, because I’m not like them.
It sounds bad, but unfortunately that’s how things are—even if not everyone in the ultra-Orthodox public behaves like this. The horrible rift in the ultra-Orthodox world is lead by the Ashkenazis. Shas tried to thrive in spite of those elites who humiliated Sephardic Jews because of their ancestry.
The idea to form a union between the two parties is only a means to remove the pesky Shas, which has been a thorn in the Ashkenazi leaders’ collective side for 35 years. This is an Ashkenazi initiative meant to bury the fight against the racism rooted in ultra-Orthodox society.
It recently emerged that the leader of the Council of Torah Sages and Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Shalom Cohen objects to the unification between the Haredi parties—for all the reasons I have mentioned here. I sincerely hope that the people who are leading this plot are unable to persuade him otherwise, by pretending that this would be a good move for the ultra-Orthodox public. It isn’t.
