Shas wins the chutzpah award

An insomnia epidemic seems to be sweeping the country. Israel's ministers not only sit among their people, they lie there, and they're having trouble sleeping.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai, for example, told a closed meeting of Shas activists that "I'm scared, I'm sweating, I can't sleep at night thinking of what could, God forbid, happen on the 22nd of the month."

And what's disturbing the minister's sleep? "Each of us has a son who could be drafted, right? So don't say, God forbid, after your son gets a draft notice, 'where was I? Why didn't I work harder?'"

Nobody around here can get any sleep; after all, parents of sons and daughters already drafted sleep fitfully. Now the parents of yeshiva students who might be drafted can't sleep.

It's sometimes haard, really hard, to decide which party deserves the chutzpah award, but I've concluded that Shas is the winner.

The decision was made when I opened the paper to see Aryeh Deri's smiling face over the captivating slogan: "We're here for the have-nots."

Shas wasn't born yesterday. For nearly 30 years it has been a member of every government, except for one brief and forced hiatus. For 30 years it has been "for the have-nots." And from year to year, from government to government, the number of poor people increases, most of them working people.

A third of Israel's children - a record - have been pushed under the poverty line; they too have trouble sleeping at night because their stomachs are rumbling.

During these decades inequality indexes have worsened, educational gaps have widened, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer, but the social order has been preserved, thank God.

It has also been preserved in the ultra-Orthodox camp, with the Ashkenazi Lithuanians on top and those of Middle Eastern origin on the bottom.

Only once did Shas bolt the government, and not exactly on behalf of the have-nots but for the sake of those who have too much.

Deri, the leader, was caught in his depravity, lost his ministerial chair, was sent to prison, and Shas was ordered to salvage his honor.

Now, after 30 years, Shas will finally help the have-nots: "Only a strong Shas will stop the economic decrees," "Only a strong Shas will worry about public housing" - the way Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Atias has worried about it for the past four years.

And it will only do this under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose concern for the weak is well known.

So it's pretty certain that the have-nots will stay right where they are and Shas will continue to worry for them, having made worrying a good way to assure a livelihood for its top officials.

There's one area where Shas can set its own fees without consulting anyone, and that's kashrut supervision. In a stellar example of compassion, the Badatz Beit Yosef certification, a private family business run by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his sons, has hiked its prices more than any other "badatz" supervision.

One might never find any pork in its establishments, heaven forfend, but piggishness apparently meets the strictest standards of kashrut.