Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, is organizing a new political party to participate in the next Knesset elections. Aguda Israel party circles have expressed concern that the new faction may cut deeply into their own ultra-Orthodox constituency.
Yosef has accused the Aguda of failing to give Sephardim fair representation. The Aguda holds four Knesset seats and those four MKs who head its list and may be reasonably confident of re-election, are all Ashkenazim. The fifth man on the list, Rabbi Yosef Melamed, a Yemenite, was supposed to have replaced one of the other Aguda MKs in the present Knesset under a rotation agreement. But the agreement was never implemented.
Aguda does not deny that most of its constituents are Ashkenazic as are most of the members of its Council of Sages who govern the party and decide how its members vote. The Council of Sages conducts its deliberations in Yiddish, a language few Sephardim understand.
Political observers say the threat posed by Yosef’s new party may be one of the reasons the Aguda opposes early elections.
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