Why secular Israelis love an ultra-Orthodox minister
Ultra-Orthodox Health Minister Yaakov Litzman might not have Facebook or Twitter accounts, but through a series of nonpartisan reforms in the health system, he has managed to capture the hearts of both religious and secular Israelis.
For yet another year, Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, of the ultra-Orthodox Yahadut HaTorah, has surpassed all the other government ministers in the various popularity polls conducted by the major media outlets in their review of the Jewish year 5776.
In a survey released on Channel 2’s show “People,” respondents were asked to rank the performances of Israeli ministers on a scale of 1-10. Politicians with high public and political profiles like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Shas chairman and Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, Culture Minister Miri Regev and Kulanu chairman and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon found themselves at the bottom of the list, with scores ranging from 3.9 (Netanyahu and Deri) to 4.9 for Regev. Meanwhile, the ultra-Orthodox politician outshone them with 6.3, the highest score of all. By way of comparison, Likud Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz came in second with 5.9.
Katz, a very active minister, has been serving in that position for the past eight years. In that time, he has managed to implement a respectable list of infrastructure projects involving roads and railways. In contrast, Litzman has served as health minister for less than two years. And while Katz is a senior member of the Likud, the ruling party that won 30 seats in the last election, Litzman belongs to a relatively small party with just six seats. Furthermore, his party represents a sector that the general population — mainly secular but also traditional Jews — considers parasitical. Litzman’s own sector often provokes antagonism among the public, not least because its most extreme elements oppose the very idea of Zionism.
Litzman's popularity doesn’t look like a passing phase. Since August 2015, when he was appointed health minister in Netanyahu’s fourth government, Litzman has been named the most popular minister in all surveys, even among the secular population. Former Labor chair and Knesset member Shelly Yachimovich, for example, speaks of Litzman in superlatives, calling him her mentor and naming him as the one who taught her to be a good parliamentarian.
