My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

Aryeh Machluf Deri was an affluent Moroccan Jew who migrated to Israel as a boy after the Six-Day War made Moroccan life intolerable even for wealthy Jews. In Israel, the Deris lived in a housing estate in a bad area. Although the Deris were secular Jews, Aryeh’s mother sent him to a series of ultra-Orthodox boarding schools. Because Deri was prodigiously brilliant, he was welcomed at a variety of schools across Israel and culminated his education at Hebron, the pinnacle school of the Israeli Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox world. Together with rabbis David Yosef and Elazar Shach, he formed the Sephardic religious political party Shas in 1984.

At 25, Deri led the party to its first electoral victory. At 26 he was advisor to the minister of the interior. At 27 he was the director general of the Ministry of the Interior, and at 29 he was Minister of the Interior. Deri advanced the causes of ultra-Orthodox Jews, Oriental Jews, peaceniks on the Left, and settlers on the Right. He was the first ultra-Orthodox Oriental Jew to obtain political power in Israel. In 1990 he was embroiled in a corruption scandal that sapped much of his public legitimacy, but he maintained his political posts.