The two main ultra-Orthodox parties running in the April 9 elections are Ashkenazi Yahadut HaTorah and Sephardic Shas. The two parties traditionally target different constituencies and have their own rabbis and educational system. In fact, Shas was founded in 1984 over the discrimination against Sephardic Jews by the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox establishment, and in order to offer a political alternative to Yahadut HaTorah.
But what happened on March 31 surprised even the most wizened veterans of ultra-Orthodox politics. Two outsiders, former Shas chairman Eli Yishai and his spiritual mentor Rabbi Meir Mazuz, participated in Yahadut HaTorah’s election rally in Jerusalem’s Conference Center, with all the major Ashkenazi rabbis in attendance. A few days earlier, the two men, the head of a prominent Sephardic yeshiva and the former head of Shas, had publicly voiced their support for Yahadut HaTorah.