Rabbi Shalom Cohen, Head of Shas's Torah Sages Council, maligned the Jewish Home party in a repeat of the acrimony that preceded the 2013 elections.
In the course of a hiloula memorial celebration at a yeshiva in Bnei Brak, the rabbi said: “There are those who call themselves Jews, but it is only a home without Jews. They are looking after the Land of Israel?”
He was quoted in hareidi website Kikar Hashabat.
Last week, as he sat shiva (traditional seven day period of intense mourning) after his sister died, Rabbi Cohen spoke ill of MK Eli Yishai and said: “There is one who divides, who left and turned the rabbis into 'rubbish.'”
Last month, he said that he was walking home when he saw the advertisements that quoted Rabbi Ovadia Yosef saying of Yishai – “He is loyal in my entire house.”
"He is right that he was loyal in his house, but now that he has left the house and gone to the outhouse, he is no longer loyal,” said Cohen.
Rabbi Cohen is remembered for calling religious Zionist Jews “Amalek.” Amalek is the nation recorded in the Torah that Jews are ordered to wipe off the face of the earth, and which symbolizes complete evil.
Before the 2013 elections, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef called Jewish Home “The Home of gentiles.”
“These are religious people?” he said. “They come to uproot the Torah. Those who elect them deny the Torah, this is the Jewish Home? This is the Jewish Home of the gentiles.”
Shas's spiritual mentors have been noted as exhibiting a tendency to become abusive when their party shows sign of weakening in the polls. Shas is currently polling at six MKs, down from the current ten.