Rabbi Tzuriel Krispel, 66, is one of the founders of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Over the years, he held key positions in the movement, helped establish it in various cities, served as deputy mayor of the central city of Elad and ran the Otzar Haim educational institutions in Beersheba. For a time, Krispel also served as the personal secretary of the party’s late spiritual founder, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
Krispel is what you might call an old-school Shasnik: Sephardi, Zionist, moderate in his views, and fully supportive of military service for anyone who is not studying in a yeshiva from morning to night. He himself served in the IDF’s Golani Brigade, Battalion 13, Company B, alongside Gadi Eisenkot, who was serving at the time in another company within the same combat battalion.
It is therefore not surprising that Eisenkot, the former IDF chief of staff, offered Krispel a place on the Knesset slate of his new 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.”
