The public committee charged with selecting a leader for the Jewish Home (HaBayit HaYehudi) party has decided not to pick any of the party's current Members of Knesset for the position. One of the three remaining candidates is currently abroad; the committee will issue a final decision when he returns next Monday.
The decision narrows the field to the following candidates: Rabbi Avi Vurtzman, Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan and Rabbi Daniel Hershkovitz. Rabbi Vurtzman is head of the MiBreishit organization and Deputy Mayor-elect of Be'er Sheva, Rabbi Ben-Dahan is head of the Rabbinical Court system, and Rabbi Hershkovitz is a professor, a former mathematics department dean at the Technion and the rabbi of the Ahuza neighborhood of Haifa.
The committee's decision came as a surprise to many. MK Zevulun Orlev, head of the former National Religious Party, was thought to have the best chances of winning. David Be'eri of the City of David (Ir David) organization was considered the front-runner among the lesser-known candidates, but he dropped out of the race earlier this week.
According to Yediot Acharonot, the Jewish Home's Public Committee is hoping to convince its chairman, General (res.) Yaakov Amidror, to lead the party. Thus far, Amidror has refused to enter politics.
The 39-member public committee decided last week to choose the party head itself instead of allowing the public to choose via open primaries. The controversial decision upset some of the party's senior members and led MK Rabbi Yitzchak Levy to resign in protest.
The Jewish Home was created through a merger of the four right-wing nationalist parties that sat in the current Knesset - the National Religious Party (NRP), Tekuma, Moledet and Achi. The latter three parties had run together as the National Union (NU) in the previous elections.
As the parties merged, two senior party members announced their intentions to run elsewhere. MK Aryed Eldad accused the new party of excluding the secular nationalist camp, and formed the religiously-mixed HaTikvah party in response. MK Effie Eitam planned to join the Likud, but for unpublicized reasons, did not end up doing so.