Ultra-Orthodox political activists are worried about the upcoming elections. How will they get the masses out to vote when Shinui, the great enemy, is plummeting in the polls? How will they defend themselves against Ariel Sharon's "big bang," which is liable to affect the Haredi political system as well? And how do they deal with the changing nature of Haredi society, which includes a growing number of immigrants from Western countries, many of whom have academic degrees?
Degel Hatorah, which represents the Lithuanian (as opposed to Hasidic) branch of Haredi Judaism, is hoping to arouse the voters via a party convention in Zichron Yaakov next week. The last time Degel held a convention was 15 years ago.
The convention will discuss issues such as Haredi education, housing, economics and the media - but above all, the elections. "For the first time, we will try to set up organized branches, secretariats and field workers - to be a party," said one of the organizers.
The event will be attended by rabbis, Knesset members, mayors and party activists, and Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the spiritual leader of Lithuanian Judaism, will make a rare speech by video from his Jerusalem home. "We'll do everything to make this a serious show of power," said one activist.
A show of power toward whom? Mainly toward the Hassidic party, Agudat Yisrael, from which Degel Hatorah underwent an ugly divorce earlier this year but now wants to remarry. Both parties have an interest in reviving the joint United Torah Judaism list, for fear that otherwise, one or both will fail to make it into the next Knesset. The electoral threshold has now been raised to 2 percent, or about 2.5 seats; in 2003, the combined list won five seats. Nevertheless, the negotiations are expected to be difficult.
Degel Hatorah walked out of UTJ in January, when MK Yaakov Litzman of Agudat Yisrael was appointed chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee. Degel said this violated the terms under which it agreed to UTJ joining the Sharon government - namely, that nobody from UTJ accept any government job for the first three months. Agudat Yisrael viewed Degel's accusation as an insult to Litzman's patron, Rabbi Yaakov Aryeh Alter of Gur, who had instructed him to accept the job, and demanded an apology as a condition of opening negotiations on a new merger.
Last week, Elyashiv sent MK Moshe Gafni to Alter to ask forgiveness, thereby paving the way for talks to begin. But other problems remain: For instance, Degel is demanding that seats on the joint list be divided 50-50, whereas Agudat Yisrael wants the same 60-40 ratio in its favor that it received in 2003.
There is also bad blood between Gafni and Degel's second MK, Avraham Ravitz, which was exacerbated when Ravitz, the party chairman, was not informed of Gafni's meeting with Alter. "That man would sell his mother, as long as he could be an MK," declared one Ravitz associate of Gafni.
One issue that the party convention will consider is how to choose Degel's Knesset slate. Always before, it has been chosen by the party's Council of Torah Sages. This time, however, the convention will consider instituting a form of primaries, in which party members would rank a list of candidates proposed by the Council of Torah Sages. Gafni is pushing this idea, and Ravitz also supports it.
Degel officials said this week that while this idea is probably not practical, it reflects the changes taking place in Haredi society. For one thing, "public opinion" can no longer be dictated by the rabbis, and there is growing recognition that MKs must answer to the voters as well as to the rabbis: They must show that their Knesset service has benefited the Haredi public. Advocates of primaries believe that a new, more representative list - Gafni and Ravitz have both been in the Knesset since 1988 - would energize voters.
Moreover, though party activists will not admit it, the status of the Council of Torah Sages itself has been undermined by the divisions within the Haredi community. It is hard to imagine a public debate about primaries taking place in the days of Elyashiv's predecessor, Rabbi Eliezer Menachem Shach.
