Shas council to meet for first time without Yosef

The Shas Council of Torah Sages will meet for the first time without the party’s mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef on Wednesday night, nearly three months after he died.The council will meet at the branch in the capital’s Geula neighborhood of the Porat Yosef yeshiva, one of the top Sephardi yeshivas.In the past it met at the home of Yosef in the Har Nof neighborhood.Yosef’s son David has replaced his father on the council, but a new president of the council has not been appointed. The council will, however, choose a new man for the powerful post of council secretary in place of the retired Rabbi Raphael Pinhasi.The main item on the agenda of the meeting is expected to be the government’s plan to draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students and how strenuously to oppose it. Mass demonstrations against the plan are expected to be held soon, which will be sponsored by Ashkenazi haredi parties.A Knesset committee on the subject led by Bayit Yehudi faction head Ayelet Shaked is expected to complete the drafting of a bill accepted by all the parties in the coalition by as early as the end of the week.Another item for discussion will be plans for the core curriculum of secular subjects to be taught in Shas’s Maayan Hahinuch Hatorani school system.Education Minister Shai Piron (Yesh Atid) has worked on a plan whereby Shas schools would receive additional funding if they enhanced secular education at the schools.The council is also expected to discuss the revoke in the Beit Shemesh mayoral election that was initiated last week. Shas’s Moshe Abutbul won reelection in the now annulled October 29 runoff election.