Top Shas rabbi signals openness to working with Eisenkot rather than Netanyahu after election

Former Sephardic chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who is also the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said on Saturday night that he has lost hope in the possibility that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ever “repent” — apparently for his perceived refusal to heed core ultra-Orthodox demands related to drafting Haredi men and sanctioning evaders — but expressed hope that the main Netanyahu rival in the upcoming election, Yashar party chair Gadi Eisenkot, could still do so.

More than an assessment of the religious beliefs of the country’s leader and challenger, the former chief rabbi’s comments appeared to hint at Shas’s shifting political alliances, as the party has grown frustrated with Netanyahu’s inability or unwillingness to deliver on key promises relating to exemptions from military conscription for ultra-Orthodox men.

“Due to our many sins, we are in a secular, non-ultra-Orthodox state,” Yosef bemoaned in his weekly religious sermon. “We pray that everyone repents. There are those who will repent, there are those who won’t.”

“Will Bibi Netanyahu repent? Not a chance. Eisenkot, perhaps he will,” mused Yosef.

The remarks from the Shas spiritual leader came less than a week after the party’s political leaders reportedly refused to pledge loyalty to Netanyahu and any future coalition he may try to form after the upcoming legislative election.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition

by email and never miss our top stories

By signing up, you agree to the terms

According to Channel 12, Netanyahu met with the leaders of Shas and the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party during the week and asked them to promise that they will remain an inseparable part of his right-wing bloc following the election.

Shas party leader Aryeh Deri reportedly told Netanyahu that without the passage of two laws to defend draft dodgers, there was nothing to talk about — specifically the Basic Law declaring Torah study a foundational value of the state, and temporary legislation to halt the arrests of Haredi draft dodgers for 90 days.

Leaders of United Torah Judaism responded in a similar manner, Channel 12 said.

On Thursday, the Shas-affiliated HaDerech newspaper made the party’s stance even clearer, with an editorial declaring that should the pro-Netanyahu bloc fail to pass the laws relating to ultra-Orthodox draft evaders, “it will single-handedly disintegrate the ‘natural partnership’ on which it has relied for years.”

Yosef’s suggestion that former Eisenkot could still “repent” also appears to be politically motivated, given that the former IDF chief expressed willingness over the past week to include Shas in a potential governing coalition if it accepts Yashar’s three core principles.

Speaking to the ultra-Orthodox Kikar Hashabbat news site on Wednesday, Eisenkot said that any potential coalition partners would be required to recognize Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state, endorse the values of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, and commit to all Israelis performing national service.

If Shas were to accept these principles, Eisenkot said, he would be open to partnering with it.

Eisenkot, who, like Shas’s voter base, is of Mizrahi heritage, told the outlet that his mother has voted for Shas for 30 years, and quipped that it “wasn’t simple” to convince her to switch her allegiance to his centrist party.

“I see Shas as a partner on the condition that it accepts the three foundational principles,” he said. “Shas is the party that is meant to send a positive message.”

“I know Shas voters, I meet them, I grew up with some of them,” Eisenkot added, noting that “many Shas voters” serve in the IDF.

Yosef, the son of influential late Sephardic rabbi Ovadia Yosef, has garnered a reputation for controversial remarks on matters of religion and state.

Last month, he suggested that the deal between the US and Iran to end the war was a divine punishment for Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s efforts to crack down on Haredi draft evaders.

In October 2025, he was heard in a recording calling a fellow rabbi and bereaved father of a slain soldier a “heretic” for supporting measures to enlist yeshiva students.

And in May of that year, he warned that if the government were to begin arresting yeshiva students for evading draft orders, then the ultra-Orthodox community would be forced to leave Israel.

“If they force us to go to the army, the yeshiva students, if they come to yeshivas and arrest students, [then] we have no right to exist here [and] we will all go abroad, we will not stay here,” Yosef said at the time.

Ariela Karmel contributed to this report.