Shas crashed in the latest election, winning only 6 seats, its lowest number since 1992, 34 years ago.
The voting threshold rose, so the loss isn't quite the full 5 mandates it appears to be. But demographics should have worked in the chareidi party's favor, not against it, and should have prevented this spectacular collapse.
Unlike Yahadut HaTorah, Shas has for years drawn from two camps. It won the votes of bnei Torah, Sephardi avreichim in yeshiva, and also the votes of the periphery: traditional and religious Mizrachi voters who loved Shas's path and the words of Maran Rav Ovadia Yosef zt"l.
But in recent years, and especially since October 7, Shas began to suffer from the need to please both camps. A 60-year-old traditional voter from Ofakim, who voted Shas his whole life, spent his evenings fuming in front of the television as he watched chareidi refusal and draft evasion.
Why should his sons serve, some of them leaving homes and businesses to put on a uniform for hundreds of reserve days a year, while the chareidi bochur does not?
Despite Shas's very impressive campaign, which tried to reach all those traditional voters, they decided this year to turn their backs and support the big party: Likud.
And here the second interesting part comes in. From my conversations with quite a few yeshiva bochurim, a striking phenomenon occurred in this election. Many Sephardi yeshiva students, lifelong Shas voters, whose parents and grandparents always chose Shas, decided to vote Gimmel. The reason? "Our representatives didn't back us on the draft issue, and Gimmel's representatives were consistent."
They expected to hear a clear statement from Shas representatives that not a single bochur would be drafted, not apologetic remarks claiming that whoever doesn't learn gets drafted.
What's true is that the Sephardi rabbanim, or at least most of them, do support the position that not a single bochur should be drafted, even those who aren't learning. But the representatives chose their own path and didn't say it clearly and firmly.
The rabbanim's explanation, incidentally, is that the army isn't built for chareidim and would cause deep secularization in chareidi society. Despite multiple tracks and units specifically created for religious soldiers, they continue to reject serving in the IDF as a whole.
In other words, because of that same draft-law problem, Shas was hit from both directions. The traditional voters who turned their backs, unable to understand how in an existential war for the home, after a horrific massacre, the bochurim don't enlist and contribute their share to the state, and on the other side, yeshiva bochurim who didn't understand why Shas wasn't standing beside them 100%.
Yahadut HaTorah, by contrast, never pandered to anyone. It never built on votes from outside and all its votes come only from chareidim. It took a firm and unified approach on the draft law, and it also received quite a few votes from disappointed Sephardim who left their Shas ballot orphaned in the ballot box.
In my personal view, the traditional voters couldn't have been saved. Maybe some of them bought the moving videos, but many of them felt it wasn't right to support small parties and preferred to give their vote to Netanyahu and prevent dangerous attractions for the right-wing bloc.
By contrast, Shas's main mistake was turning its back on the yeshiva bochurim. You already lost the periphery, at least stick to the rabbanim's line, embrace and give full backing to the bochurim.
But Shas's advisers apparently were confident the voters were in their pocket, a captive audience that would vote anyway, and the hard slap they got came at the ballot box.
