(May 18) - Meir Abergel could have taken a vacation day yesterday, but Rabbi Ovadia Yosef wouldn't let him. Yosef, spiritual leader of the Shas party, ruled that all students in Shas-affiliated yeshivot must volunteer to help the party in the elections.

Thus it was that Abergel, 31, a student at the Midrash Hasepharadi kollel in the Jewish Quarter, found himself working from 6 o'clock in the morning, ferrying Shas voters and observers to polls in and around Jerusalem. Mark my words, said Abergel, maneuvering a van plastered with posters of Yosef and kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Kadouri through the narrow streets of Jerusalem's Mekor Baruch neighborhood. Shas is going to be the surprise of the elections.

With party headquarters closed to the press until polls closed Monday night, activists predicted that Shas would rise from its current 10 seats to 13, 16, even 18 seats in the next Knesset. Party leader Aryeh Deri postponed a victory rally until Tuesday so that activists could work as long as possible Monday night.

It's not hard work today, said kollel student M. Peretz, fielding calls on his cellphone from volunteers asking how they could help the party. Shas has been doing its work for the last two months, so that by the time people get to the ballot today they already know who to vote for. According to Shas deputy minister Shlomo Benizri, two factors were fueling the partys rise: the recent guilty verdict in Deri's bribery case which Shas has presented as an anti-Sephardi witch-hunt and the anti-religious vitriol of Knesset candidate Yosef Tommy Lapid of the Shinui party. The public is giving us a very warm reception. There is incredible enthusiasm, Benizri said during a campaign stop in Beit Shemesh. It should only be this warm all over the country.

Outside the party's Jerusalem headquarters, activists carried certificates from thousands of people who had purchased letters in Torah scrolls for one shekel each. The names would be entered into a computer and blessed by Kadouri, volunteer Shai Amram said. Kadouri would then fly by helicopter to the grave of Shimon Bar-Yohai on Mt. Meron, where he would issue a blessing for party supporters. I don't see any party aside from Shas that is working in the development towns, said Amram, 24, a student at the Porat Yosef kollel. Anyone who cares about society has to support Shas. Add to that Kadouri's blessing, and were certain to gain.

Some pundits had predicted that Deri's conviction would hurt Shas, but most activists said yesterday that the conviction, and the J'Accuse videotape in which Deri argued his innocence, had greatly strengthened the party. The videotape did a lot for us. It even brought us a lot of secular supporters, said kollel student Eliyahu Nishani, 33, as he exited a polling station in Telshe Stone. Every Shas activist out here today is working for the honor of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef because of all the suffering they caused him [with the Deri trial]. They even gave him a heart attack. Despite polls predicting a victory for One Israel's Ehud Barak who said he would not negotiate with Shas as long as Deri remained party leader most Shas activists continued to believe Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would win. After all, the Torah greats had predicted a Netanyahu victory. It's clear that it will be Bibi, said Meirav Touitou, 18, a high school student and Shas supporter scheduled to begin an afternoon shift as a monitor at Telshe Stone. That's what the rabbis said, and so we know it will be.

Nishani said he preferred not even to utter Barak's name, given his purportedly anti-religious positions Barak has recommended curtailing a blanket draft deferral for yeshiva students and the possibility that a victorious One Israel would form a government with arch-secularists Shinui and Meretz. Most Shas supporters, though, appeared confident that Barak would be forced to negotiate with Shas after the elections.

Barak can talk that way now to win votes, but if we have 16 mandates, or even 13, Barak will have to sit with Deri or the nation will hate him, said Aharon Elyassin, 40, a Torah teacher in Jerusalems Bukharan quarter. If he tries to make a government with the Arabs or the [Russian immigrant] goyim instead of the Jews, that will be the end of the road for him. Added Abergel: When were the third-largest party in the Knesset, or even the second-largest, let's see how Barak talks.

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