Attempts to politically organize mizrahim (Easterners), a marginalized Jewish group in Israel, had failed, primarily because most mizrahim saw them as separatist with respect to Jewish Israeli society. In response, Shas, an Ultra-Orthodox, populist, mizrahi political party, adopted Jewish religion as its primary ideology. Seeking to forge a new ethno-religious identity which would allow its constituency of poor mizrahim to feel they are at the center of Israeliness, Shas has confronted the still dominant Zionist identity upheld by the Israeli establishment. Being ashkenazi (European) is a crucially important, but only one characteristic of this identity. Shas’s political wisdom lies in its ability to direct the resentment of its mizrahi constituency not against the ashkenazi, but against the secular, modernizing component of the dominant ideology. In counterposing Jewish, rather than mizrahi identity to the dominant culture, Shas has provided its followers with an integrative, rather than separatist principle of political mobilization.