Rabbi Yaakov Aryeh Alter, the eighth leader of the Gur Hasidic sect, recently invited his follower Yitzhak Goldknopf to his humble apartment to inform him that he was to represent the group in the next Knesset.

Alter, known as the Gur Rabbi, also directs the group’s political arm, the Agudat Yisrael party, one of two partners making up the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party. The Gur Rabbi decreed in 1999 that the party would join the government led by Prime Minister Ehud Barak, only to order the party to quit the government 18 months hence and bring about its collapse.

The Gur sect is deeply divided these days, but its political power as the largest and most influential Hasidic sect in Israel remains undiminished. It was rocked by the recent resignation of its leading Knesset representative, Rabbi Yaakov Litzman, who agreed to step down under a plea agreement to get criminal charges dropped.

Litzman is being replaced in the top UTJ role by a representative of the Vizhnitz Hasidic sect, Rabbi Yaakov Tessler, under a rotation arrangement between Agudat Yisrael and its on-again, off-again UTJ rival, Degel HaTorah. The Gur leadership is deeply unhappy about having to relinquish its long-held top slot in the UTJ and will presumably try to bring about the government’s collapse in order to have new elections, send its new man into the Knesset and thus regain its primacy in UTJ.