A report on Shas and Ovadia Yosef

Since the 1980s, it has become a predominantly Hasidic party, though it often combines with the Degel HaTorah non-Hasidic Ashkenazi Haredi party for elections and coalition-forming (although not with the Sephardi and Mizrahi Haredi party Shas).

Rabbi Shach had earlier assisted Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef in splitting from Agudah to create a Sephardic Haredi party known as Shas.

3) The second wave began in the 1970s associated with the religious revival of the so-called baal teshuva movement, although most of the newly religious become Orthodox, and not necessarily fully Haredi. The formation and spread of the Sephardic Haredi lifestyle movement also began in the 1980s by Ovadia Yosef, alongside the establishment of the Shas party in 1984. This led many Sephardi Jews to adopt the clothing and culture of the Lithuanian Haredi Judaism, though it had no historical basis in their own tradition. Many yeshivas were also established specifically for new adopters of the Haredi way of life.

Due to his differences with the Hasidic leadership of the Agudat Yisrael, in 1984, he allied with Ovadia Yosef, with whom he founded the Shas party.

Later, in 1988, Shach sharply criticized Ovadia Yosef, saying that, "Sepharadim are not yet ready for leadership positions", and subsequently founded the Degel HaTorah political party representing Lithuanian (non-Hasidic) Ashkenazi Jews in the Israeli Knesset.

He is one of the founders of the Shas' political party, and has served as Israel's Minister of the Interior, Minister of the Development of the Negev and Galilee, Minister of the Economy and as a member in the Security Cabinet of Israel.

However, on 28 December 2014, Channel 2 released video footage in which Ovadia Yosef, the founder of Shas, attacked Deri, calling him a wicked man and a thief.