Rabbi Tzuriel Krispel, 66, helped found Shas and spent decades working within its political and educational institutions. He served as deputy mayor of Elad, ran the Otzar Haim educational network in Beersheba and was once personal secretary to the party’s late spiritual founder, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Krispel represents an older, more moderate strain of Shas politics: Sephardi, Zionist and supportive of military service for men who are not studying full-time in yeshiva. He served in the IDF’s Golani Brigade alongside Gadi Eisenkot, who later became IDF chief of staff.

Eisenkot subsequently offered Krispel a place on the Knesset slate of his centrist Yashar! party.

“They offered me a place on the slate as an ultra-Orthodox, a former Golani soldier, a Shas man, and a rabbi in Israel,” Krispel told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. “Eisenkot is fine, but the guys around him are a little anti-Haredi. I sat down with a woman at headquarters who manages ties with the ultra-Orthodox frameworks in the army. It was a good meeting, but it doesn’t sit well with the atmosphere there. That’s not my natural environment.”

Asked whether actual Shas voters might move to Eisenkot, Krispel dismissed the idea.

“That’s not happening,” he said. “Someone who cares about the Torah world isn’t going to leave Shas that quickly.”

Krispel remains loyal to Shas, but the party is nevertheless losing support. Tens of thousands of voters are potentially moving toward National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit, Likud and Eisenkot’s Yashar!

Shas won 11 seats in the previous election but has recently been polling at just seven.

The central issue is the continuing crisis over military service for ultra-Orthodox men. Shas’s uncompromising position on the draft appears to be creating problems among some of its traditional supporters, particularly those whose families serve in the military.

On Thursday, Shas chairman Aryeh Deri sought to repair his long-running relationship with Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the former Sephardi chief rabbi. Deri went to Yosef’s home after party officials concluded that continuing the dispute could cost Shas additional seats.

Under the resulting compromise, Deri formally backed down, while Yosef was recognized as his father’s successor and “the guide and leader of Maran’s legacy in the Shas movement and its institutions.” “Maran” is the honorific used for the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Yosef will not receive the formal title of president of the Council of Torah Sages, however. Shas will instead aggressively pursue legislation exempting Haredim from military service before the next election.

Yosef has also spoken positively about Eisenkot. According to Army Radio, he said, “Eisenkot is a warm Jew. His grandmother voted Shas and wanted him to become a rabbi. He can be trusted.” At a public appearance, Yosef added, “Maybe Eisenkot will become religious. Netanyahu? There’s no chance he’ll become religious.”

Eisenkot has frequently noted that his mother, Esther, has voted for Shas for 30 years and that he has had to persuade her to vote for him this time.

He told The Times of Israel that Shas supporters approach him daily saying they intend to vote for him, including voters in Kiryat Shmona, Shlomi and Or Yehuda. Many are part of Shas’s traditional, working-class periphery.

These voters have family members serving in the military and are increasingly uncomfortable with Shas’s anti-draft rhetoric. They want an equal sharing of the national burden and are unwilling to embrace slogans such as “We will die rather than enlist.”

A veteran Shas activist described the trend this way: “Drive out to the moshavim in the south. You’ll see Sephardim wearing black kippahs or large knitted kippahs. They all serve in the IDF. They can’t stand seeing Shas turn into the anti-draft Jerusalem Faction,” he said, referring to the radical ultra-Orthodox group known for its fierce opposition to military service.

“I’ve been on the ground for years. You can’t turn a Sephardi into an anti-Zionist. They aren’t willing to go along with it,” the activist added. Shas has a base of four seats. It will hold on to that no matter what. But everything beyond that is up for grabs.”

He continued: “I hear people saying that if there’s already a Moroccan candidate for prime minister, we should support him without hesitation. After all, that is the essence of Shas, to lift up disadvantaged Mizrahi Jews.”

Eisenkot is of Moroccan Jewish descent.

On Thursday, Yosef released a video blessing IDF soldiers, echoing his late father. While he has previously opposed enlistment even for men not studying in yeshiva, he again stopped short of calling on Haredim to join the army.

At a Shas conference in Holon, Yosef said: “We love the soldiers,” he said. “During the Swords of Iron war [the IDF’s name for the ongoing conflict sparked by the October 7 Hamas massacre], I visited all the bases and blessed the soldiers, completely secular soldiers.”

Against this backdrop, Shas launched its election campaign in Holon Thursday night. Deri could not afford to publicly display the party’s internal divisions so close to the election and instead sought to project unity.

He also wanted to avoid disruptions by supporters of Yosef and the Jerusalem Faction, who have recently confronted him at public events. Yosef attended the launch, received a warm welcome and sat beside Deri at the head table.

The event was closed to the press as an “internal gathering,” an unusual decision for the publicity-conscious party during an election campaign.

Upcoming polls will show whether Deri’s reconciliation effort can slow the loss of Shas voters. Party officials say the agreement with Yosef may only be a temporary truce, with the dispute potentially resurfacing after the election.

Deri has survived difficult campaigns before. With the Selichot season approaching, Shas is expected to emphasize its religious identity, feature the late Rabbi Ovadia in campaign posters and revive its familiar spiritual imagery.

But Shas’s traditional voters will also hear competing appeals from Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and, increasingly, Eisenkot.

The failures of October 7, 2023, and the prolonged war that followed have deeply affected Shas supporters serving in the regular army and reserves. For these voters, the next election could be an unusually difficult choice.