Labor Party Launches Chareidi Department

Isaac Herzog’s Labor Party has launched a chareidi department with hundreds of members under the leadership of 36-year-old female activist Michal Chernichovsky.

The chareidi world has regarded Labor as an enemy of religion for decades, particularly after Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach’s 1990 speech in which he lambasted the Labor Party as having cut itself from its Jewish past and wishing to “seek a new Torah.”

Chernochovsky explained that the department’s goal is “to influence the Israeli agenda in non-sectoral issues as well, but from a point of view that reflects chareidi interests.”

Likud, which has its own chareidi department, responded to the news ambivalently. The Likud chareidi department welcomed a counterpart in Labor, but other Likudniks predicted, “The attempt to transfer the success of Likud’s chareidi department [to Labor] is doomed to absolute failure.”

{Matzav.com Israel}