Shas
Charedi ("ultra-Orthodox") religious political party in Israel
Shas (Hebrew: ש״ס) is a Haredi religious political party in Israel. Founded in 1984 by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former Israeli Sephardi chief rabbi, who remained its spiritual leader until his death in October 2013,
it primarily represents the interests of Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredi Jews.
Shas is the third-largest party in the Knesset as of 2024. Since 1984, it has been part of most governing coalitions, whether the ruling party was Labor or Likud.
Name
The party was originally called Shom'rei Torah ("Guardians of the Torah"), with the acronym ש״ת, pronounced "Shat" or "Shas". However, Israeli election law requires a party wishing to use letters for their acronym that already appear in the acronym of an existing party to first obtain permission from that party, and the Israeli Labor Party, whose letters are אמת, refused to grant Shas permission to use the ת. Instead, it was named ש״ס, Shas, an acronym for Shomrei S'farad, meaning "Sephardic Guardians". The name is also a reference to the six orders (Shisha S'darim) of the Mishnah and the Talmud, both of which are often referred to by the same acronym, "Shas". The party's legal name is "Hit'akhdut ha-S'pharadim ha-Olamit Shom'rei Torah" (התאחדות הספרדים העולמית שומרי תורה), meaning "International Union of the Sepharadim, Guardians of the Torah".
History
Shas was founded in 1984, prior to the elections to the eleventh Knesset in the same year, in protest against the small representation of Sephardim in the largely Ashkenazi Agudat Yisrael, through the merger of regional lists which were compiled in 1983.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Shas” as charedi ("ultra-Orthodox") religious political party in Israel. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as charedi ("ultra-Orthodox") religious political party in Israel. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q904635. VIAF identifies the subject as 151808046. The Library of Congress control number is n99013255. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984, 2013, 2024 and 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.