The respected Jewish sage, Rabbi Eliezer Schach, who died on November 2nd aged 105, will be remembered by the wider world as the man who, in 1990, emerged from his position as head of the Lithuanian school of non-Hassidic orthodoxy to become a kingmaker in Israeli politics. In a country founded by secular - and often atheist - Zionists, he was seen by many as a throwback to a superstitious devotion they thought they had left behind in the ghettoes of eastern Europe.
Although the quintessence of European yiddishkeit, he co-founded the orthodox Sephardi Torah Sages, or Shas, party in 1984. When Shas deserted Yitzhak Shamir's Likud coalition in 1990, he forbad his members from joining a Labour-led government on the grounds that Labour was "anti-Jewish". He thus effectively guaranteed the survival of the right-wing administration in Jerusalem.
In the longer term, he sparked off a fierce debate about whether religion and politics should mix in the modern state. He reminded Israelis that religious-secular divisions were as important as the schisms between Jew and Arab, and between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. In fact, he exploited this latter division to his own ends.
Opponents called him a "Jewish Khomeini". Yet for yeshiva students, and many Sephardim who resented what they perceived as decades of racism from Israel's secular Ashkenazi elite, he represented a return to authentic Judaism. He both gained from, and inspired, the religious revival that swept Israel after the six-day war of 1967, when the country gained control of territories that constitute the biblical land of Israel.
Yet the orthodox world was not a solid bloc, and Rabbi Schach made many enemies along the way. Unlike the moderate religious Zionists, or the radical zealots of the Gush Emunim settler movement, he was lukewarm in his devotion to Zionism. Instead of "Israel", he used the term "Yishuv", or settlement, as applied to Jewish Palestinians during the pre-1948 British Mandate. His agenda was to make Israel a more Jewish state, rather than a state for Jews.
His non-Zionist views did not, however, stop him from staking a claim in the corridors of power. The parties he patronised won dis-proportionate state funds for yeshivas and other orthodox institutions.
He also supported banning the sale of pork and ending El Al's sabbath flights. Secular Israelis resented such interference, and many orthodox Jews objected to his presumption in speaking on their behalf. One of his fiercest opponents was the religious Labour MP Avraham Burg, who called for stricter separation of synagogue and state.
Born in Lithuania, he arrived in Palestine in 1938 with his family, thus narrowly avoiding the Holocaust. After eight years studying in various yeshivas (mostly of a Zionist bearing), he settled at the Ponevezh Yeshiva, founded five years earlier at Bnei Brak, outside Tel Aviv, to commemorate the original centre destroyed in Lithuania.
He saw himself as the standard-bearer for rigid orthodoxy against creeping apostasy. Continuing a feud that dates back to the 18th century, he also opposed the allegedly less intellectual Hassidic faith of fellow haredim, or ultra-orthodox Jews.
His greatest political achievement was to recognise and channel the irritation of the Sephardi orthodox into Shas in 1984. Behind the scenes, he waged a fierce battle for influence with Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, former Sephardi chief rabbi and the man assumed to be Shas' natural mentor. In 1988, Rabbi Schach founded another party, Degel Hatorah (Flag of the Law), for Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox. At his famous ruling of 1990 - delivered in a curious mixture of Yiddish and rabbinical Hebrew, to an all-male press conference - he rebuked and humiliated Shas. Yet a surprising number of Shas' politicians - including its bright, young leader, Aryeh Deri - remained loyal to their yeshiva boss.
In May 1992, on the eve of a new Israeli general election, and following allegations of corruption by Shas' ministers, he overstepped the mark by deriding the Sephardim as backward and "not ready for government".
Party members felt betrayed. In the resulting schism, he deserted Shas and helped form a rival, three-party bloc, including Degel Hatorah.
But, in June 1992, voters, presumably fed up with his backroom machinations, returned only one Degel seat to Shas' seven.
After the election, he tried to forbid Shas from joining a government that included what he called the "apostate" Meretz party, but his words had lost their sting. While this outburst ended his political career, it did not diminish the reverence many felt for his talmudic skills - as illustrated by his four-volume rabbinical commentary on the Talmud, in a unique configuration called Avi Ezri.
He is survived by a son and a daughter.
Eliezer Schach: born 1896; died, November 2001