Michael Hazan

The research project aims to analyze the role played by Shas Party in the reshaping of religious and national identity among the Mizrahi Jews in Israel from its founding 1983 to the peak of its political and electoral triumph in 1999. The study explores how Shas functioned as both transitional and disruptive actor, operating along the boundaries between Judaism and Zionism. This proposal therefore examines the conditions that enables the Shas’s political success and its ability to establish itself within the political counsciousness of a socially and culturally marginalized Mizrahi population. Through an analysis of the interaction between religious discourse and political strategy within Shas, this study eventually aims to contribute to a broader understanding of the transformation of Israeli society and of the evolving relationship between the notion of ethnicity, national belonging and religious identity.