“They perceived me as a threat,” Deri tells me. “Here stood a person who was as good as they were. Not afraid, not ashamed. An organizer, a planner, a leader. And that person operated in the most modern and effective way. But he represented Judaism and he spoke for Oriental Jews. And he took the ultra-Orthodox out of the ghetto they lived in, and he rescued the Oriental Jews from under the oppression they lived in. And throughout the country he created change—he built alternative schools and community centers and gave people other options. He threatened Ashkenazi Israel’s cultural hegemony and
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