Deri visited Kfar Chabad and conjured Oslo

When Aryeh Deri's men began to grope towards a meeting with mentor of Kfar Chabad, Rabbi Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi, they probably did not imagine how much noise such a gathering will arouse. Initially Deri's plan was to keep it a secret, but it was the Rabbi of the village who said, "There's no problem to publicize it."

That’s when things began to go wrong.

Looking back, perhaps Deri's associates would have preferred to skip the visit to Kfar Chabad, and recommend Aryeh to remain to celebrate the Pidon Haben with Rabbi Moshe Yosef's family, and leave the visit to Chabad Rabbis to Yaakov Litzman and Meir Porush of Yahadut Hatorah.

From the start, Deri planned to sit with Chabad Rabbis - Rabbi of the village, along with Rabbi Yitzchak Yehuda Yaroslavsky, Rabbi of Nachlas Har Chabad neighborhood in Kiryat Malachi – to shed what is on his mind and close the story. He did not come to gather votes.

For it is known that Chabad Rabbis do not get involved in politics and will not publicly order for whom to vote. To those who ask, they will respond according to what is suitable for each individual. "Chabad has never interfered in politics", says an active Chabad Chassid, "and when it did in the תשמ"ט elections it was an exception."

Thus, you will find Lubavitcher voters for Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu, not to mention the massive support the Ichud Leumi received. Even Baruch Marzel's party, at the time, reaped many votes (which were thrown away).

Hence some technical details related to the meeting, followed by more in-depth discussion about what the Rabbis discussed with Deri. It is important to emphasize that for the purpose of preparing the report, I spoke with key figures associated with the subject. Not everyone will be quoted here by name, for obvious reasons.
So what did Deri want to earn from his visit?

We will start with the identity of the meeting organizer. The way of the world is that people like publicity, but this time organizers are trying to stay in the shade - which was odd. The one, who decided to take on the 'warranty' on Chabad, was committee chairman of Kfar Chabad, Benjamin Lipshitz, who declared to me: "I'm the one who organized the meeting."

"What is there to organize," he asked one Lubavitcher businessman. "The Rabbi is willing to meet with anyone who wants to talk to him."

Still, it's a matter of coordination, and the question is who did it, also from the Shas side.

"Nissim Alklasi is the one who arranged the meeting by Shas," said some, but Nissim, the head officer of the Minister of Religious Affairs Yaakov Margi, rejects and claims that he has no connection to the meeting. "When I do something, I know how to stand behind it," he said. "Nissim, by the way, has excellent contacts in Kfar Chabad. Shas has done a few things for them, including the establishment of a religious council headed by Rabbi Yosef Kamenetsky. There are those who say that one day he will-if he succeeds and if the Rabbis freeze appointment ends – to upgrade the village Rabbi as Rabbi of the Lod Valley as a whole. Chairman of the village, however, suggests that the appointment has been done before, and that in fact the Rabbi serves this role as well.

Either way, there is no doubt that Chabad has gratitude towards Shas (to Eli Yishai, one should say), and in short: there is every reason in the world to recommend the Chassidim to vote for the party which returns the crown to its former glory (and a series of jobs).

But things are not all so simple. Also Chairman of the Finance Committee, MK Moshe Gafni, helped the many requests addressed to him by Chabad. Some of them I myself witnessed online. Even Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, and Meir Porush were always there for them, to help and assist. There is also the Ichud Leumi, a party whose members was soldiers of Chabad, visited their concentrations, and applied for help when needed, and of course performed better on the task to maintain the Chabad regime: Save the Land of Israel and its security.

In order to be nice to everyone, not to quarrel with anyone, and to continue to maintain the tradition of "no meddling in politics", Chabad Rabbis do not publicly announce which party to vote for.

So why did Deri come to meet with the Chabad Rabbis? The reason is that there is a difference between "do not give an order", and between teaching and managing an all-out campaign against Shas headed by Aryeh Deri, the man they believe supported the agreement and trained the Oslo agreement.

There were clear signals in the direction. Chabad officials joined various right wing sources, to do everything to prevent Shas from soaring higher in the coming elections. Their judgment was simple: If Shas will keep its 11 seats, Hgr"a Yosef will understand that the transaction of bringing Deri into the Knesset (taking the risk of the trio circus who barely manage to leap in harmony) - was not really worthwhile.

This is exactly what Deri was trying to prevent.

He tried to prevent it, and at the end got judged within the orthodox media, and not only.

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!