Fresh off the press: RABBI MEIR KAHANE: His Life and Thought (Volume One: 1932-1975) by Libby Kahane


From the back cover:


Rabbi Meir Kahane was born in New York City in 1932. He studied at the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn, receiving rabbinic ordination in 1956. That same year, he completed his law studies at New York Law School, and he subsequently received a master's degree in international law from New York University. After serving as a congregational rabbi, he founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968 in order to combat the rise in antisemitism. Concerned about the alienation and assimilation of Jewish youth, Rabbi Kahane spent two decades touring American college campuses, exhorting Jewish students to learn about Judaism, make aliya to Israel and stand up proudly as Jews. In 1970, he spearheaded a campaign of Jewish activism that led to the emigration of tens of thousands of oppressed Jews from the Soviet Union. He entered the political arena in Israel when he made aliya in 1971 and was a member of the Israeli Knesset from 1984 to 1988. He wrote several best-selling books, including Never Again!, Why Be Jewish? and The Story of the Jewish Defense League. His widely-read weekly columns appeared in The Jewish Press from 1961 to 1990.

About the Author:

Libby Kahane was married to Rabbi Meir Kahane from 1956 until his untimely death in 1990. Together with their four children, they moved to Israel in 1971, where Libby was employed as a reference librarian at the National Library in Jerusalem for twenty-seven years. Her research experience combines with her first-hand knowledge of events to present a comprehensive survey of Rabbi Kahane's ideology and political strategy, beginning with the childhood experiences that shaped him. She is a proud grandmother and great-grandmother.

Quotes from Rabbi Meir Kahane excerpted from book:


"When the chips are down, you know who's going to fight for the Jew? Only the Jew. And it's about time we understood this." (1971)


"If all anti-Semitism could be made, by magic, to disappear, the American Jew would still face a problem of survival. The disease of assimilation and alienation of Jewish youth from its heritage and people is often spoken about, but its full gravity and danger are not comprehended by most of us. We face the problem of young Jews by the hundreds whose lack of Jewish identity and pride and whose Jewish rootlessness combine to drive them into foreign fields and hostile ideologies....

At the same time, in Israel, the ironic growth of a similar Jewish identity crisis has arisen to plague the state with young Jews who identify with the state but not the Jewish people and whose alienation from Jewish heritage and tradition has now been joined by weakening of ties with their fellow Jews in exile." (1972)


"Jewish survival and redemption are proof eternal and ultimate that the world is not governed by logic, by sanity or by man. It is controlled and decreed by G-d." (1975)


"The Jew who makes his body bend to his will is a man who has no chains on his arms. The Jew who hears the cry of fellow Jews and casts off from himself the vanities and nonsense of money and sterile status ... and leaps into the waters of duty – this is a man who has come out of Egypt." (1975)


Praise for Rabbi Meir Kahane: His Life and Thought (Volume One: 1932-1975):

"This is an extraordinary tale of a man with a vision and a mission, whose life's journey was passionately directed to promoting Torah, Jewish pride and power, and the Zionist dream. Rabbi Meir Kahane, teacher, writer, and activist, is portrayed in exceptional detail and vividness, a kind of day-to-day serial drama. His boundless dedication to the Jewish people, skillfully animated and painstakingly documented in this comprehensive biography, can serve as an inspiration for Jewish youth today, as he did in his lifetime. A major figure in modern Jewish history, Meir Kahane can now be judiciously assessed and appreciated through this new and gripping volume."
–Dr. Mordechai Nisan, author of Toward a New Israel: The Jewish State and the Arab Question, Lectures on the Middle East.

"Your biography is well-written and meticulously researched. (Your years of work as a librarian, which you discuss in your manuscript, clearly came in handy.) The combination of memoir and biography works well, and the narrative is structured around a combination of interviews and careful archival research that largely lets your late husband speak for himself, with only limited editorializing on your part, which was a very wise decision...

A work of scholarship that attempts to contextualize his actions both personally and historically, and let readers draw their own conclusion.… You try to show the person, the husband and father, behind his bitterly controversial political persona.

It will be a major addition to our knowledge of a very turbulent period in Jewish history."
–Dr. Peter Eisenstadt, editor in chief, Encyclopedia of New York State and Encyclopedia of New York City

Can a biography written by a relative (in this case a widow) be a definitive biography, when such biographies generally omit any bad things the subject may have done in his life?

Well said.

The litmus test of when the definitive biography of Kahane is published will be all his sympathizers going ballistic with libel lawsuits and death threats against the author.

And the other side of the coin is a wife would certainly have access to far more details than anyone else and could provide isights never known before... it's certainly no different than an auto-biography.

True...

But it's a lot closer to an autobiography by proxy than a "definitive" biography. And for people as... violent crazy bigoted controversial as Kahane an autobiography would be very far from "definitive"...

On the contrary, it is very different from an autobiography.

A book such as this would probably be very interesting, and probably useful to a future critical biographer who could write the definitive biography, but it neither definitive nor something like an autobiography. Libby Kahane never knew what it felt like to be 13 year old Meir Kahane.

Hitler is to germans is what Kahane wanted to be to <fill yourself> ...

Careful, K is on the site.

What am I? Chopped liver?

I remembered you.
K is way more aggresive than you.

Well I guess that's what separates the Rebbe's from the chassidim...

Yes, this is what I meant. I'm sure that it would be interesting. The only other two-volume biography I read was one covering the life of Herman Melville.

Hitler vs. Kahane
Hitler                                                                                 
        Kahane

Contemplated attending Catholic seminary                                           Attended rabbinical seminary
Immigrant obsessed with adopted country                                         Immigrant obsessed with adopted country
Was a secret agent for the German government                                   Was a secret agent for the FBI
Talked about expelling the Jews                                                         Talked about expelling the Palestinians
Was a good public speaker                                                 Was a good writer
Had his private army of goons (the SA)                                               Had his private army of goons (the JDL)
Revoked German citizenship of Jews                                                   Wanted to revoke Israeli citizenship of Arabs
Banned interfaith sexual relations                                                       Wanted to ban interfaith sexual relations
Believed getting rid of the Jews would revive Atlantis                            Believed getting rid of the Arabs would bring Moshiach
Lived long enough to cause tons of trouble                                           Was gotten rid of on time 

           
           

I don't believe that Kahane ever proposed to kill millions of Arabs.

He proposed the completion of a population exchange which had already been implemented in part with the expulsion of millions of Jews from Arab lands and their relocation to Israel.

Hitler never proposed final solution in public either.

Hitler never proposed to kill millions of Jews, he wanted to send them first to Palestine, then toa reservation around Lublin and then to Madagascar. When all else failed the 
Jews were killed.
Do you think Jordan or Kuwait were going to take in millions of Palestinians deported by Israel?
What did Ariel Sharon do in 1967 when he didn't know what to do with more Egyptian POWs than handcuffs?
... that's right, he had them killed.
Get my rift?

That's weasel language for gassing them and praying the outside world doesn't ask where they are...

Why not? Israel took in millions of Jews deported by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, etc.

Are you suggesting that the Arabs are any less humane than the Jews are, when confronted with the suffering of their coreligionists?



I wasn't aware of that. I thought he was sincere when he talked about busing them across the border and kicking them off the buses. (Which is nicer than our Temani brothers and sisters who had to walk from Yemen to Eretz Yisrael.)

Are you kidding? But he wanted to use Egged buses!

I am shocked by how terrible Jews can talk about another Jew whether you agree with them or not.
R' Kahane was killed for being a Jew and for no other reason.
I would hope krumlikepretzel would open your heart to his children and wife who became orphans and a widow. Forget that you don't agree with his philosophies. Remember he is a Jew.
Dont' read the book if you don't want to, no one will force you.

Karl Marx and Jesus were Jews as well. What are you implying ?

I am saying that you don't have to agree with someone but you also don't have to attack someone so viciously. and comparing Kahane to Hitler is disgusting.

I thought you were a fan of Karl Marx???

Yes, as others have already said, "definitive" is clearly the wrong term. A close associate-- a spouse, a child, a friend--can have useful and interesting insights about the subject, but will lack needed objectivity.

Wrong. There have been plenty of people who were killed for being Jews and for no other reason. Meir Kahane and Binyamin Kahane were killed for being racists and advocates of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
I think that it's far more important to remember the thousands of Jews who have been killed and maimed as retaliation for Kahane's reckless hateful rhetoric. 
I spit on the racial definition of "Jew". A Jew is "oseh maaseh amecho" and Kahane was certainly not "oseh maaseh amecho".

I agree that Hitler had much more style and charisma than Kahane, but I wouldn't go as far as saying the comparison is offensive.

You mean for following Halacha??? (at least one interpretation of it)


Name one...


Ask all the Russian Jews that he helped get out if they feel the same way.... Or the Jews terrorized by Blacks in NY (including some of his staunchest enemies who ran to him for help when the p00p hit the fan).

And is this really what you come up with first thing in the morning??? I would go back to bed and try to wake up on the other side...

You place me in the wrong time zone

In that case, go to bed quick before you hurt yourself...

Justifying the murder of Kahane is beyond the pale. I repeat: she is lower than scum.

No. The Zionists took in Jews from Arab countries because the needed them for their demographic agenda. As a matter of fact, it was them who largely instigated the hostile climate that caused Jews to
 emigrate. (by the way, nobody was actually deported then)

When push comes to shove, most politicians are pretty cruel and self-serving, regardless of country of origin. Just google Moshe Sharett...
You can't deport people en masse unless you control the area you're deporting them to.
All you need to do is try to figure out the logistics for such an operation to realize the real plan was mass murder...

Yea, but she isn't.

You mean the very special "Russian Jews" that you keep with mothballs just in case one needs to peddle some pet case ? Because most Russian Jews have been harmed by Kahane's deeds as he was the textbook "Jewish Fascist" that fed Soviet propaganda to the last days of USSR.

Come on, everybody knows that if there ever was a rodef, Mr. Kahane was it. His words and actions (I don't mean the ecstasy smuggling; halevai he stuck to that) have and will justify anyone willing to come up with a "Jew Nazi" stereotype; he was advocating to commit unjustified genocide in the name of Jews, and that rendered him the absolute uber-Rodef.

Besides, don't forget he was a Marmaroszer and thus not a Jew at all, in your book at least .

Will someone please site ONE - just ONE example of where Rav Kahane advocated unjustified genocide? I have heard this repeated so often time and time again by liberals and have yet to see it anywhere with my own eyes. Without hard proof to the contrary I am begin to believe this is part of "the big lie" or simply a smear campaign by self-hating Jews.

I know you're going to answer that's "justified" genocide that Kahane was advocating...
There is no such thing as "justified genocide".

No. I'm going to answer that what is described there in the talmid is simply not genocide. Not even close.

Hitler did not speak about killing Jews because the Jews were trying to kill Germans. I don't understand how you can justify comparing cold blooded murder to self defense. It's simply not intellectually honest.

I can't speak for "most" Russian Jews, but I can relate what dozens that I have spoken to have personally told me when they hear the name "Kahane" mentioned. And many other people I have spoken to have had similar experiences...
I've yet to hear a Russian Jew curse or even say something negative about Kahane (even those married to goyim)...

What self-defense? The November Criminals were just a myth.

And this is also a myth?

I've never met a Jew with less sympathy and mercy for her own people. How can you can you callously demand we lie down and allow headlines like yesterday's "Mommy, what happened to my legs?" continue under the shamefully misguided notion that defending ourselves from cold blooded murderers is genocide? I'd like to believe you are not an evil person which forces me to conclude you are either terribly misguided or simply foolish.

There have been way too innocent children who have been maimed for life both Palestinian and Jewish for a tiny plot of sand.
Ethnic cleansing, tit-for-tat violence, militarism and warmongering are not going to bring peace. Peace involves negotiating with your "enemies" and compromising.
I would give away the Har haBayis to prevent another headline like "Mommy, what happened to my legs?" but you wouldn't, right?

If you think Israelis have contempt for "fryerim", it is NOTHING compared to the sentiment in the Arab world. There IS no compromise in Arab culture. The strong prevail and the weak capitulate, and any sign of weakness on OUR part eliminates any possibility that they will give in. They sit around and laugh at how pathetic we are, and time after time we come back for more abuse...

The Middle East is not Europe, you need to speak the language of the land, and around here you negotiate with a stick, not good will gestures and diplomacy.....

That's an irrelevant theoretical question. The facts are we are dealing with a hostile entity determined to destroy us no matter what we give them. Believing anything else is naive as history has proven. And I continue to maintain there simply isn't any moral equivalent between terrorists that try to maim and kill a civilian population and a national army defending against these attacks. Misguided mercy is evil.

How can you compare Hitler who massacred 12 million innocent people, 6 million of those Jews who never once raised an arm against the Germans, never tried to murder German women and children, with a Kahane who was the first rabbi ever to bring attention to russian jews.
If you believe someone who will defend himself is the same as someone who will kill because you are the wrong race, religion or creed, then I think there is something extremely wrong with your logic.
As a Jew who knows about the holocaust, I think it is vile and crude to compare Kahane with Hitler.
I am proud my daughter is named after such a great person!

I think it's over the top, but didn't Meir Kahane attack all Jews he disagreed with? What's a Nice Irving?

Is that so?

For some reason you omitted three words from what I had written. Care to explain why?

He may have criticized and denounced them and their ideology, but he put himself (physically) on the line to defend them when they came under attack by goyim. The JDL wasn't created to protect Right Wing FRUM Jews, it was created and in practice defended even deformed Temples.

אה"נ. I'm not here to say there is nothing that can be said in his defense, or that he never did anything good. Read what I was responding to; a very specific point made by Ruthie.

How does that make him different from the countless other Rabbis in the public limelight that attack other groups of Jews on a regular basis. Many have made a career out of it.....