NEWS FEATURE: Israeli Sephardi Leader Jailed, Influence Will Continue

c. 2000 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ On the night before Arye Deri went to jail, Rachel Levy stayed up most of the night with her family crying and praying. Sunday morning (Sept. 3), as Deri, the leader of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox Shas party, set off from his Jerusalem home to begin a two-year sentence […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ On the night before Arye Deri went to jail, Rachel Levy stayed up most of the night with her family crying and praying. Sunday morning (Sept. 3), as Deri, the leader of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox Shas party, set off from his Jerusalem home to begin a two-year sentence for bribery and fraud, the high school senior came to bid him well _ but not farewell _ as part of a massive street demonstration.

“He’s still our leader. He sparked a revolution in our communities, and he will return from prison with even more power and authority,” promised this earnest supporter of Shas, the party of Sephardi or Middle Eastern Jews, which Deri has led for nearly two decades.


“Deri is the one that gave expression to our path. He gave us a home, roots,” said Levy, referring to the Sephardi Jews’ traditional sense of disenfranchisement. “Even if you say he was a thief, we would be willing to forgive him because he did so much for us.”

For tens of thousands of Sephardi Israelis like Levy, Deri’s imprisonment on Sunday, after one of the longest and most celebrated trials in Israeli history, was just one more heartless attempt by the secular Israeli establishment to oppress religiously observant Jews much as the ancient pharaohs oppressed the biblical Israelites.

“All of Sephardi Judaism is in jail,” proclaimed huge signs in a downtown Jerusalem street through which Deri and his convoy passed on the way to Ramle’s Ma’asiyahu prison some 25 miles west of Jerusalem. The long procession of buses and automobiles, packed with hundreds of fervent, singing Deri supporters, halted traffic around Jerusalem and its approaches for hours.

Biting, anti-establishment slogans also bedecked the Ma’asiyahu prison yard when Deri arrived there a couple of hours later and where he was hailed by some 20,000 supporters, some dressed in striped prison uniforms.

“We’re not parting, God forbid. We’ll remain together,” Deri told the crowd just before he disappeared behind the prison gates, his arms wrapped symbolically around a Torah scroll.

The demonstrations, peppered by outbursts of stone-throwing against the police and the media, turned the day of Deri’s incarceration into a public celebration of Shas’ political power and prestige. Rabbis speaking before the crowds also expressed their disdain for Israel’s secular-based legal institutions, which Shas party members would like to see replaced with a system of Jewish religious law.

“This is Bastille Day for the Sephardi Jewish community,” said Rabbi David Yosef, leading the rally at the prison. Yosef is the son of the 80-year-old Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia. The elder Yosef is regarded not only as Deri’s personal mentor but also as the supreme religious authority in the Sephardi Jewish world.


“Shas will continue in its goals, returning people to Judaism, not by the power of the fist but by the force of their beliefs,” said the elder Yosef, a widely acclaimed scholar, trying to strike a more moderate tone.

Deri was Yosef’s personal protege when he led Shas on a meteoric rise to political power in the 1980s and 1990s, building the new grass-roots movement into a party which today has 17 parliamentary seats. After his prison term is complete, it is expected that Deri will eventually replace the aging Yosef as the Sephardi community’s supreme leader, even if his felony convictions prevent him from holding government office again.

“No doubt he has already become a personality and a spiritual figure, even among the Ashkenazi (European Jewish) community,” observed Yehudit Friedman, one of many ultra-Orthodox Jews of European origins who also turned out for the demonstrations. “People go to Deri to seek counsel and advice. I’m certain that he will eventually inherit the mantle of spiritual leadership from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.”

But while the long trial may have enhanced Deri’s reputation in religious circles, it has deepened the chasm between Sephardi Jews and the secular Israeli establishment which has shouldered the blame for putting the hero Deri behind bars. It is secular Jews, mostly of European origins, who still dominate the upper ranks of key Israeli institutions like the police, the legal system, and the media _ all of which played key roles in the unfolding of Deri’s trial and conviction.

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Increasingly, Deri supporters have compared their leader’s fate to that of the biblical Joseph, who was betrayed by his brothers and imprisoned for 10 years in Egypt on false charges of adultery, only to be released and transformed into a top Egyptian government official.

“He’s like Joseph of the Bible, Joseph the Just,” said a woman who identified herself only as Smadar at Sunday’s rally.


Smadar, a second generation Israeli of Iraqi origins, said she believes Deri’s trial is merely a continuation of the kind of contemptuous treatment her parents received at the hands of secular Israelis when they arrived here as new immigrants in the 1950s.

“My parents came as religious Jewish children wearing yarmulkes and peyot (sidecurls),” she recalled. “The absorption officials shaved off the curls and sent them to secular kibbutz schools. It took them 15 years to return to religion.”

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Some observers said the demonstration was another watershed for the Orthodox Sephardi community, which has been less prone to street activism than Orthodox European Jews, who are more accustomed to organizing big public protests as a way to press their political demands.

“The Ashkenazim are used to these kinds of public demonstrations. But for the Sephardi Jews, this is a revolution,” said one rabbi named Nathan, formerly of New York City, who declined to give his last name. “Deri will become the symbol of the time when the Sephardim, which are half of the population, came out of the closet to demand their rights from the secular elites. He’ll be like an Israeli Martin Luther King.”

For Israel’s secular Jews, however, Deri hardly fits the bill of a civil rights figure like King. Many saw his entry to prison Sunday as a triumph of civil rule over powerful Orthodox politicians who are trying to take Israel in the direction of Iran, and have become accustomed to using public funds and budgets to further their own religious and political goals.

“In the end, Deri’s entry into prison was a major victory for the rule of law and equality before the law,” said the Israeli Hebrew-language daily Ma’ariv in an editorial. “Whether it was also a victory for Israeli society and those who would like to heal the rifts in it, is a different and separate question.”


DEAEND FLETCHER

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