Newly resigned Shas head Aryeh Deri did not take the long, bumpy road from being released from prison to becoming head of the party just to leave the crown and throne behind because of an old insult from the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Shas' spiritual leader. The rabbi cursed and insulted many public figures. Terms like "thief" and "evil" are small change in the lexicon of the great rabbi. No one believed the cries of "he's innocent," and certainly not Yosef, who was easily angered. Deri is going all in. He let the rabbis come to his house while he was away, all out of great respect for the Torah, and promised his children that he would devote himself to full-time fatherhood, only he was late, and they have already already grown up, and no one is taking the bull by the horns to ask him how he could have been so concerned about the honor of his rabbi, who referred to him as "evil" and a "thief." Deri fired all the cannons. He resigned from the Knesset, but his wife, Yaffa, told Rina Matzliach on Channel 2 Tuesday night that if God came to his senses and greatness awoke, her husband's renunciation of the Shas chairmanship might not be final. To bolster the threat, Deri prompted all the Shas MKs other than Eli Yishai to announce that they, too, would resign. So what? The next people up will take their places, and it's possible that not everyone will follow in his footsteps. And who gets the party funding? Yishai headed south to Sderot on Tuesday to needle Deri. Unlike his political rival, Yishai will not lend his hand to a third Oslo Accord; he will keep his hands clean, unlike people whose names we don't need to mention; and he, too, clung to an ornamental dressing of love for the teacher and mentor and sent his rivals to ask forgiveness at the rabbi's grave. If everyone he sent goes there, they might run into each other. These past two days, Deri has initiated an unprecedented political explosion that culminated in his resigning from the party entirely. He wants to make a big comeback, with divine blessing and without enemies in his own camp. But he might have gone too far and lost the reins, and it's possible that he is dragging his followers after him into a political abyss. If that happens, there is nothing to regret. Shas is an inherently problematic sectoral party. But if it must continue to exist even after 30 years, it deserves different leadership. Do they want to resign? Did they get caught up in mischief? No big deal. So long, and we won't be seeing you.
