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Rabbi Meir Kahane: His Life and Thought - Volume One: 1932-1975

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A detailed, fascinating, fast-paced, vivid and topical biography of one of the great visionaries of modern Jewish life, Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Reveals of his boundless dedication to Judaism, the welfare and safety of the Jewish people, the Jewish State and the Land of Israel.
Written by his widow, Libby Kahane, about the husband, father, teacher, leader and activist, it is about both the man and his powerful ideas

This biographical tome takes us through his childhood and education, the leadership qualities and love for Judaism and Zionism, that he showed from so early on.
It shows a deeply human man and his struggles on behalf of persecuted Jewry in the then Soviet Union, his efforts to protect vulnerable Jews in the inner cities of America from violent elements including the anti-Semitic Black Panthers and their thuggish followers, and his battle against Israel hatred of university campuses.
The period from 1968 until the early 70s was the period when the Jewish Defense League, created by Meir Kahane, inspired the dedication of thousands of young Jews in the USA, Israel and around the world.
Rabbi Kahane migrated to Israel in the early 70s where he campaigned for a strong Jewish State that would react harshly to crush ruthless Arab terror, and urged buying up Arab land and paying Israel's hostile Arab population to leave the Land of Israel and settle elsewhere.
Kahane would not take any of the persecutions of or dangers to the Jewish people and Israel passively.
He was imprisoned many times for his civil disobedience and militant campaign against the Soviet Union from the 1960s, including harassment by the JDL of Soviet diplomats and officials. when the three million when thousands were being imprisoned and some even executed for practicing their faith and identifying with the Jewish State. As he wrote in 1963: "They are murdering the faith of three million Jews in the Soviet Union today and we shut our ears to the cries of our brethren... They outdo the Nazi who seek our bodies and seek to rob us of our souls"
Rabbi Kahane railed against the hypocrisy of the liberal Jewish establishment and Jewish leftists who ignored the plight of Raiza Palatnik a Jewess imprisoned and tortured by the Soviets in the concentration camp of Dnieprodersjinsk exclaiming how "Her name is Raiza Palatnik and the world hardly knows of her. If her name had been Angela Davis, we would have seen masses of humanity- a great part of which would have been undoubtedly Jewish- prepared to mount the barricades on her behalf. but Raiza is not Angela Davis, she is only Jewish, and the Jewish leftists have no time for her, particularly since she is a Zionist.
In response to the PLO and PFLP terror attacks such as the killing of 18 Jewish men, women and children in apartment blocks in Kiryat Shmona on April 11,1974 when Arab terrorists broke into apartment after apartments, shooting and throwing bombs at the inhabitants, and the Maalot massacre of 24 teenage children by terrorists infiltrating from Lebanon in the town of Maalot, the JDL reacted.
JDL supporters assaulted PLO representatives in the USA and Kahane promised to set up a task force to retaliate against the Arab countries that sponsored the terror. Kahane was also dedicated to Jewish education, the strengthening of Jewish pride and identity and was fiercely opposed to assimilation and intermarriage.
In a letter to his children he taught them that "without mesirut negesh (self-sacrifice) the Jew is not a complete Jew and can never fully reach kiddush Hashem (sanctification of G-D's name"
Rabbi Kahane raised Jewish consciousness and Jewish activism and his announcements encapsulate the questions and answers of the Jewish people such as "Why do Jews always wait until the knife is on their throats?"
and 'Daddy where you when they tried to destroy Israel"
He also mobilized Christian support for Israel through patronage of organization called Christians for Zion reminding Christians that "THE REAL CHRISTIAN INTEREST IN THE MIDDLE EAST. THE REALIZATION OF G-D'S FINAL REDEMPTION, THROUGH TOTAL SUPPORT OF THE JEWISH STATE OF ZION" based on the word of the Bible that G-D would bless those that Israel and curse those that curse Israel.

He was a truly a man for all seasons. He was not a racist as so often charged by his enemies and several times Rabbi Kahane took a Black man, Chakwal M Cragg, an Ethiopian Jew, to synagogue and hosted him for Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath).

Rabbi Kahane urged his children in another letter to "Love all. With tenderness look upon all that you see: the frail flower, the frightened dog, the desperate man. Love them all and let this love lift you to the heights of holiness".
A definitive biography and incite into the thoughts and ideas of a great Jewish leader of his time.

This highly interesting volume covers Rabbi Kahane's youth and his early years up to the time he founded the Jewish Defense League when he was 33. It also covers the peak period of the Jewish Defense League, 1969-1971, but from an entirely different slant from his book The Story of the Jewish Defense League. It is fascinating to read about how he wrote and found publishers for Story of the JDL as well as his other early books: The Jewish Stake in Vietnam, Never Again, Time to Go Home, Our Challenge and Writings.

This volume describes Rabbi Kahane's little known early years in Israel. It is engrossing to read about his plan for encouraging Arab emigration from Israel and his arguments for quelling Arab terror acts through counterterrorism.

All in all, this is a important biographical study of Meir Kahane and of his philosophy.

Objective and Gripping

This is a gripping biography of Rabbi Kahane written by his wife Libby Kahane. Contrary to expectations this is not a hagiography, but rather an objective exposition of his activities. A lively description of his childhood and teen years show the development of his personality and ideas.

Rabbi Kahane's actions are explained in his own words because Mrs. Kahane method is to quote from his writings to give the reasoning behind the various demonstrations he led. This is an academic, scholarly work with the facts painstakingly footnoted.

I recommend this highly to anyone who wishes to learn about this dynamic individual. Volume one covers his activies as founder and leader of the Jewish Defense League in the United States and as well as his ventures into Israeli public life.prior to 1975. In her afterword, Mrs. Kahane informs the reader that volume two is in the works.

Anyone who reads this book will discover that Rabbi Meir Kahane was far from being the violent activist that the mainstream press made him out to be; rather, he was a complicated man with many missions, and he carried them all out to maximum effect, with a lack or a minimum of actual violence, notably with the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in which he defended the defenseless; harassment of Soviet officials, doing more to free tens of thousands of Soviet Jews than all the well-organized rallies organized by the establishment with their eloquent speeches; political and economic approaches to the Israeli-Arab problem; and above all, instilling Jewish education and Jewish pride in thousands of Jews who otherwise would have simply melted into the melting pot of America. The book is written by Kahane's widow, who served as a librarian in Israel's national library for more than a quarter of a century and writes with impressive scholarship and thoroughness that supplement her unique credentials. Rabbi Kahane should be revered as one of the greatest Jewish heroes of our time. This book is a must read.

good source of info, might be a little confusing as to when everything is happening on the time line of his life but not too confusing. Cc\hapters are organized topically somewhat and not principally by time so that is the source of the above confusion.

"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

"The combination of memoir and biography works well, and the narrative is struc- tured around a combination of interviews and careful archival research... A work of scholarship that attempts to contextualize his actions both personally and historically, and let readers draw their own conclusion.... 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