The new Haredi party Tzeva Shachor (“Black Color”) has released another campaign video ahead of next week’s Knesset election. This one is built around the party’s ballot letters Ner, the Hebrew word for “candle.”
The video shows one voice joining another, one yeshiva student joining his friend, and one yeshiva linking up with the next. Single candles light one after another until they become a great light illuminating the entire yeshiva world.
The message ties the ballot slip directly to the light of Torah. Each “Ner” slip dropped into the ballot box is portrayed as another candle lit, adding up to a large public and political force. One ballot may look small, the video suggests, but as more students and more yeshivas join, “Ner” upon “Ner” becomes a political power that cannot be ignored.
The party says it was founded around a single goal: dealing with the draft crisis, which it says threatens the continued existence of the yeshiva world. Its members argue that only a party devoting all of its activity to the issue can put it at the top of the national agenda and secure a comprehensive solution.
Tzeva Shachor grew out of an anti-conscription alert network of the same name, created to warn supporters when military police were trying to arrest Haredi draft evaders. Behind the party are dozens of rabbis and yeshiva heads from the mainstream Haredi world, including Lithuanian, Hasidic and Sephardi circles. They seek a return to the traditional “Torato umanuto” (“Torah study is his profession”) arrangement, with no sanctions on yeshiva students who do not enlist.
The party was effectively launched at a march in Bnei Brak earlier this month, held in support of Haredi draft evaders who had served time in military prison. Gadi Eisenkot, head of the Yashar party, called the event “Netanyahu’s walk of shame.”
Tzeva Shachor is challenging the established Haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism. It is one of 38 lists running in the October 27 election.
