Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

In Israel, politicians in trouble for bribery but with blessings, not money

Shas, the Israeli political party representing Mizrahi Orthodox Jews, was fined 7,500 shekels ($2,150) for giving voters supposedly holy amulets that would purportedly protect voters from the coronavirus, The Jerusalem Post reported.

The amulets included a picture of Shas’ late spiritual founder, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and came in a container with a Biblical quote about the Israelites surviving a plague along with the sentence ““Protection against plague: Corona – and all evils.”

It is illegal in Israel to offer blessings or curses to voters as part of an election campaign. The fine was levied by Israel’s Central Elections Committee.

Shas was also accused of offering voters holy amulets during Israel’s last election in September.

According to the Post, the Central Elections Committee received reports of election-day shenanigans targeting multiple parties, including allegations of voter fraud, ballots being glued to each other, and false claims that parties had dropped out. The committee also ordered the ruling Likud party to stop using limousines to drive voters to the polls in Eilat.

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.