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The Brotherhood of the Underdogs
Peter Hirschberg
Supporters, both Sephardi and Ashkenazi, gather to pray, study and lament perceived injustices outside Ma'asiyahu Prison, where Aryeh Deri is serving his bribery sentence. |
It's 12 on a balmy mid-September night and hundreds of men are still gathered on a dusty lot next to Ramlah�s Ma�asiyahu Prison. Most are seated, in crooked rows of white plastic chairs under a huge tarpaulin, listening intently to a rabbi preaching in high-pitched, anguished tones about Jewish values. Finally, the rabbi touches the nerve: �Reb Aryeh,� he roars, �will come out and lead the revolution.� Much of the crowd rises to its feet, clapping ecstatically.
�Reb Aryeh� is Aryeh Deri, founder and former head of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas party and now Israel�s most famous convict; on September 3 he began serving a three-year sentence for corruption, in a cell just beyond the barbed wire fence on the edge of the lot where the crowd is gathered. Deri�s supporters have transformed the area into a makeshift yeshivah called Sha�agat Aryeh (�Lion�s Roar�), which is drawing thousands of sympathizers.
The crowd is diverse. There are newly religious Sephardim, wearing the Shas uniform of black pants, white shirt and black velvet skullcap. There are Sephardim in regular clothes, wearing colored skullcaps, some swept up in the Shas-fostered religious revival. A few wear a yellow fluorescent sticker with �1111387� on their chests � Deri�s prison number.
There are also non-observant Sephardim like Amnon, 31, an ambulance driver from Givatayim who says he recites Kiddush on Friday night but drives to the beach on Saturday. He�s here because Deri�s conviction symbolizes the inequality between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. �I believe he took the money,� concedes Amnon, who has donned a large white skullcap �out of respect� for the place. �But why wasn�t (Ezer) Weizman tried?� he demands, referring to the former president who was investigated on allegations of bribery but ultimately escaped indictment.
Yet the crowd is not exclusively Sephardi. There are Ashkenazim too: Gerer hasidim, Vizhnitzer, Belzer, Karliner and Bratslaver hasidim, and even a few �Lithuanian� (anti-hasidic) ultra-Orthodox men. Most of the hasidim are young men with wispy beards, barely out of their teens. Deri, they insist, is behind bars because he is an ultra-Orthodox Jew who has terrified the country�s secular establishment by leading a Jewish religious revolution.
�Deri symbolizes Jewish revival,� says Naftali, a Gerer hasid, �and so the secular left is trying to knock him down.�
�Deri,� chimes in Haim Meir, a young Vizhnitzer hasid, �doesn�t represent any single sector. We�re all doing time with him.�
With his incarceration, Deri has drawn together a coalition of groups that cuts across ethnic and sectarian lines. They all feel some form of persecution � ethnic, socioeconomic or religious � and Deri is the symbol of their oppression. For many, his jailing is proof that their lifestyle is under attack by an affluent, godless Israel.
The latest civil reform proposals by Ehud Barak, for buses to run on the Sabbath and for civil marriage, have heightened the sense of siege here, as have the proclamations by Justice Minister Yossi Beilin that the prison �yeshivah� is illegal and must be dismantled. �Here,� says one hasid, �you will find the brotherhood of the underdogs. And Deri is their martyr.�
This �brotherhood� is a powerful and potentially volatile force, especially when infused with the growing messianic zeal that many of the Shas newly observant exhibit and which has been heightened by the approaching High Holy Days and the nightly slihot prayers outside Ma�asiyahu.
And Deri may well try to exploit it when he finally emerges from behind bars � either in two years time (after the anticipated �third off for good behavior�), or earlier if a Shas campaign for a presidential pardon bears fruit.
CONSIDERING THAT SEPHARDIM have always been treated as third-class religious Jews by the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox � one of the major reasons for the emergence of Shas in the early 1980s � it is extraordinary that some Ashkenazim are now rallying around the Moroccan-born Deri. But Deri is clearly aware of the phenomenon, and appears intent on breaching the boundaries of his ethnic-based constituency.
At the mass rally outside Ma�asiyahu on the day of his imprisonment, for instance, he asked for forgiveness from Rabbi Eliezer Schach, the head of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox world � in which Deri grew up � and the Ashkenazi former patron of Shas. Deri had crossed Schach twice: In 1990, when he toppled the national unity government headed by Yitzhak Shamir against the express orders of the powerful rabbi, and again in 1992 when he joined the left-wing coalition headed by Yitzhak Rabin which Schach had described as a government of apostasy.
It is not clear whether the aged, infirm rabbi has actually forgiven Deri. But in the second week of Deri�s incarceration, Rabbi Haim Kanyevsky, a leading figure in the Lithuanian yeshivah world, visited the Ma�asiyahu site to serve as godfather at the circumcision of the new-born son of a supporter. (The name of the child: Aryeh.)
On a podium outside Ma�asiyahu, just before he went behind bars, Deri spoke of a �Jewish revolution� in Israel. That was a departure from his past talk of a separate Sephardi religious revolution, and a hint that he is beginning to reach out to a pan-religious audience.
Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox backing for Deri goes beyond the grassroots. Hamodia, the daily newspaper of the Agudat Yisrael party, ran strong messages of support for him before he entered prison. �Hamodia is the most Ashkenazi paper in the ultraOrthodox sector,� says Dudi Zilbershlag, an ultra-Orthodox media adviser. �And it has given Deri massive support. So have the ultra-Orthodox weeklies.�
Adds Israel Eichler, editor of the Belzer hasidim�s weekly Hamahaneh Haharedi: �The Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox see what�s happening to Deri as part of the war that the secular regime is waging against Judaism.�
The response to Deri, says Bar-Ilan University sociologist Menachem Friedman, an expert on the ultra-Orthodox community, reflects an absence in recent years of a strong Ashkenazi spiritual and political leadership. On his release, says Friedman, Deri could set himself up as the political/-spiritual leader of a camp dedicated to battling �the secular threat� posed by Shinui party leader Tommy Lapid, Meretz�s Yossi Sarid, and Barak himself.
Says Friedman: �The ultra-Orthodox are in crisis. If there is peace, the focus will shift and they will be the next enemy.� And if, rather than peace, armed conflict breaks out with the Palestinians, much of the Israeli public will get even angrier at them, because they don�t serve, don�t bleed: �It�s a no-win situation for them,� says Friedman. �They badly need a smart, talented public leader.�
Zilbershlag doubts that the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox would ever accept Deri as their representative. But he agrees that the various hasidic sects may do so: �I see him ultimately at the head of a general Jewish religious bloc. Aryeh Deri is seen today as the North African Mandela.�
THERE�S A CARNIVAL ATMOsphere at the Ma�asiyahu �yeshivah.� Skullcaps bearing Deri�s embroidered name are on sale, along with cassettes, by Shas �court singer� Benni Elbaz, with names like �Longing for Aryeh.� There�s even a man selling 15-shekel toy lions (Aryeh is Hebrew for �lion�) with bobbing heads and Deri�s prison number on their backs, which he suggests could adorn car dashboards.
It�s all part of the growing Deri personality cult. Broadcasters on Shas pirate radio stations have begun talking in apocalyptic terms, all but referring to Deri as the messiah, and suggesting that his imprisonment is a sign that the end of days is nigh. At the prison lot, Deri�s brother Yehuda, the Sephardi chief rabbi of Beersheba, fans the sense of urgency: �Aryeh,� he intones, addressing the crowd, �will be out in less than a month ... before Rosh Hashanah.�
Among Deri supporters, says Neri Horowitz, a Beersheba University expert on Shas, �there is a sense that something dramatic is going to happen, any minute now. They�re euphoric and they�re frustrated. They�re in a bubble and believe the world is against them. I don�t know if they will know how to come down from this high without violence.�
Deri has cultivated the sense of martyrdom: He was the focal point of a rally in Jerusalem on the eve of his imprisonment; not a single rabbinic figure of note was in attendance. �He�s going to be one of the great leaders of our generation,� says Yehuda Avidan, a Deri confidant, using the Hebrew term, �gadol ha�dor,� reserved for the rabbinic figures who guide ultraOrthodox life.
Many of those drawn by this fervor belong to the newly religious masses spawned by the Shas revolution, people who do not necessarily fit into the yeshivah world and whose faith includes strong elements of folk religion, such as a reliance on amulets. Many are from working-class towns. And some, if you asked them, could describe the inside of Deri�s cell from personal experience with such accommodations.
Unlike the Sephardi yeshivah students, for whom Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef is the unquestioned leader, this larger group of newly observant Sephardim see Deri as the ultimate leader. (These supporters also include Bratslav hasidim � members of a hasidic sect, popular among the newly religious, with which Deri has hooked up as a result of annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimages to the Ukraine grave of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav.)
Inside this newly observant movement, the tone is often extreme. Moshe, a representative of the group outside Ma�asi-yahu, wears jeans, T-shirt, a velvet kippah, and a permanently angry expression. �We have to go back to the days when a woman who cheats on her husband is stoned to death, as the Torah determines,� he declares fiercely, almost defying his listeners to challenge him.
Since his conviction, Deri has steadily moved apart from the party he created and from its spiritual leader Rabbi Yosef. As a result, the moderate Shas mainstream � the yeshivah students who are loyal to Yosef � is no longer balancing the more radical elements of the constituency loyal to the jailed Deri. Some Shas observers fear that the deep social frustration and messianic fervor evident outside Ma�asiyahu could turn violent � in the form of an attack, for instance, on a secular leader.
�There�s so much frustration there,� says a Shas insider. �And there�s militancy and radicalism. It could lead to bloodshed ... Deri could be a dangerous source of power. He can develop mystical theories. And he can take a lot of people with him. I�m frightened.�
Sociologist Friedman warns that Deri himself might not be able to control the movement developing around him. �Every charismatic leader is as much a prisoner of his followers as their leader. No one knows how this will develop, not even Deri.�
IF, AS MANY BELIEVE, NATIONAL elections are not far off, Deri would still be in jail and could play only a limited role. His Shas leadership successor, Eli Yishai, still trying to cement his position, may want to marginalize the Deri factor. So might Yosef, who dropped Deri as party leader after the 1999 elections, when Prime Minister
Barak refused to enter into coalition negotiations with a convicted felon. Yosef is apparently also deeply unhappy about the Deri personality cult.
But has Deri outgrown his 80-year-old spiritual mentor? Is he starting to carve out a new, independent course?
�Imagine for a second that Rabbi Ovad-iah is no longer around,� says one Shas observer. �Deri will eat Yishai alive. He�ll have no problem finding a rabbi to act as the spiritual head of whatever new group he leads. And the fact that he�s been inside is a big advantage. He�s the martyr. He�s inside in order to sanctify God�s name!�
Academic Neri Horowitz suggests that, when Deri emerges, he might split Shas � taking with him the newly religious elements. �If Deri steers in the direction of religious and nationalistic fanaticism,� says Horowitz, � then the party will splinter. He can set up a council of rabbis and send his representatives to the Knesset.�
Back outside Ma�asiyahu, a little after 1 a.m., hundreds of men are now standing to recite slihot. Meters away, inside the prison walls, Aryeh Deri is said to be praying in unison. If the collective will here prevailed, of course, he would step through the bars and pray with them in the flesh.
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