 
Reading Kahane
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By Larry Gordon
Published on Thursday, May 01, 2008 -
COMMENTS (0)
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He was a solitary, heroic, and tragic figure all wrapped up in one unassuming man with a towering conscience. He was a man who could not be still or rest if Jews anywhere in the world were not being afforded the same opportunities available to those of us living in freedom. As a result, there was very little time for him to sit back or relax.
I spent some of the just-elapsed chag engrossed in a new book that I received just before yom tov. The book was years in the making and was written by Rabbi Meir Kahane’s widow, Libby, who resides in Jerusalem. What essentially emerges from this rather beefy first volume, which covers Meir Kahane’s life from his birth (in 1932) through 1975, is that all the while as Rabbi Kahane led struggles to free Soviet Jews and stand up to the most powerful people in the world to defend Israel, there was a strong and heretofore silent personality behind the scenes that probably provided him with much of the strength and encouragement needed to carry on.
With the publication of this book, Libby Kahane is silent no more. I first received an e-mail from Mrs. Kahane a few years ago asking if I could provide her with some of the articles I had written about Meir Kahane during the 1970s and 1980s when he was evolving as an important and potent force in Jewish life. Because Kahane was so principled and determined, he was also persecuted and prosecuted by the authorities in the United States and Israel through those two decades. Rabbi Kahane was murdered in New York in 1990 by El Sayyid Nosair, an Arab terrorist who was later identified as being involved in the planning of the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.
After Rabbi Kahane’s death, a number of followers created organizations intended to emulate the rabbi’s Jewish Defense League, but none could replicate his genuineness or fortitude, and they became mostly not-so-glorified support groups for those mourning the loss of their leader. One such organization was called Kahane Chai. This group, incorporated both in the U.S. and in Israel, was supposed to be founded and directed by Rabbi Kahane’s eldest son, Binyomin Zev. The junior rabbi, known as Binyomin, was tragically murdered along with his wife, Talia, by Arab terrorists who shot up their car in the West Bank as they returned from a Shabbat in Jerusalem spent at the home of Libby Kahane. Five of their six children were in the family van at the time of the shooting but, thankfully, were not injured.
Coincidentally, I maintained an office in the late 1990s in the same office building as Kahane Chai on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn. I was never a member of JDL or any of their offshoot organizations. In 1997, the Kahane Chai organization was branded by the United States government as a terrorist organization, though it accomplished seriously little. During that time, someone associated with Kahane Chai had appropriated some of my possessions from my office to their office. Those things included lists of people who were clients of companies, or donors to organizations, that I was consulting for. Shortly after 9/11, I received a visit from two FBI agents inquiring about my association with Kahane Chai and was asked to explain why some of my things were in their offices. Clearly the items had been stolen. The agents were concerned that I might have been supporting them, thereby aiding and abetting terror—quite a serious crime. Over a very short period that followed, which I presume involved some investigations, the government became convinced that I was not a supporter of whatever the organization was doing or that I was not the terrorist type.
My association with Rabbi Kahane over all those years was strictly that he was a subject for newspaper articles as well as a series of interviews we did on New York radio stations WFMU, WNYM, and WMCA.
Each of those radio stations (two of which still feature Jewish programs more than 30 years later) are stories unto themselves. For now, suffice it to say that in 1979 Meir Kahane was in the WFMU studio with me for an interview. The subject turned toward the planned march of Nazis in Skokie, Illinois that was scheduled to take place a few weeks later. There was great protest over the march, but, intriguingly, there was the argument that no matter how repugnant and offensive such a march would be, Nazis were as entitled as anyone else to freely express themselves. Needless to say, the greatest proponents of that right came from within the Jewish community.
That morning, Rabbi Kahane said unequivocally into our studio microphones, “Nazis who march in Skokie have to be killed.” As soon as that statement was uttered, I was ordered by station management to cut the interview and stop immediately, or else there would be consequences that would jeopardize the future of the entire program. Ultimately, I negotiated an agreement with the station that would allow Kahane to be on in the future, but only if the interview was recorded in advance of the broadcast. It was one of my first introductions to extreme hypocrisy. I was puzzled why so many would fight for the Nazis to march in America (a march that would call for the death of Jews and others) while Kahane had to be shut down and silenced.
Anyway, that anecdote is not in Libby Kahane’s new book because I don’t believe I ever recounted that experience to her and, in any event, it is out of the purview of the current volume’s timeline.
The new book, Rabbi Meir Kahane: His Life and Thought (Volume One: 1932–1975), runs to over 700 pages and provides the reader with small yet fascinating insights and details into the thought processes of Meir Kahane. Unfortunately, because of the fashion in which our national sound-bite-dominated media works, the only portrayal of Meir Kahane and the old JDL that most people have encountered is that of a group of Jewish terrorists—a parallel to the PLO or to the modern-day Hamas, and considered to be potentially as violent as those groups. Painting these mental images helps the media do its job, but by just scratching a half-inch beneath the surface, one will find this to be a total misrepresentation of reality.
Reading the new book takes you through page after page of self-sacrifice and, more often than not, frustration, as Rabbi Kahane first tries to protect Jews in changing neighborhoods of New York and then becomes involved in what would ultimately become the struggle to free Soviet Jews from the oppressiveness that accompanied Communism. There is the detailed recounting of Kahane’s frustration in trying to raise needed funds, to get his books published—and the fact that when he finally succeeded, they sold poorly—and, ultimately, his attempts to win election to the Knesset in Israel. He finally succeeded in attaining a Knesset seat in 1984, but the Israeli government barred him from running again in 1988, and in 1994 his political party, (Kach) was outlawed. Though Kahane won only one seat in 1984, political prognosticators believed that had he been allowed to run in 1988, his party would have won 12 seats and would have become the third-most-powerful in the country.
Throughout the book, while the frustration at seemingly every turn is palpable, so is the deep and abiding faith in G-d and the fact that if Meir Kahane would not have gotten involved to the extent that he did in the things that he got involved in, then no one else would have.
Two items that stand out in my mind are how he spoke with his then very young children by phone after being arrested and held in an Israeli prison. He explained to his oldest son, Binyomin, that he didn’t think that any kids in the youngster’s class would be able to say that their Abba was in jail because he was trying to free Soviet Jews who were being religiously persecuted, two of whom were sentenced to death by the Kremlin. He was certainly right about that.
A portion of the book is devoted to the rabbi’s effort to interfere with then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s meeting with then-President Richard Nixon. Kahane was determined to do all he could to make sure that the Nixon-Brezhnev meeting would not take place. He felt that if the meeting was a success and Brezhnev received the trade agreements his country needed with the U.S. without those pacts being tied to opening the Iron Curtain and letting Jews out, then there would not be another opportunity to make progress in this direction for many years to come.
Additionally, there was little pressure on the U.S. from Israel—and then-Prime Minister Golda Meir—because Israel felt that it needed American support more than it needed Russian Jews. Kahane advocated drastic action from his supporters in the U.S. and was hampered by his inability to legally win back his passport, which had been confiscated by the authorities in Israel. At that time, the only way Kahane could communicate with his organization in New York was by sending letters. The Israeli Secret Service, of course, intercepted the letters. In them he called for some very drastic actions, like kidnapping or shooting a Soviet diplomat. Of course, no rational person would support this course of action and there is a school of thought that believes that Kahane knew his mail was being read and that just the reading of these threats—without anyone actualizing them—was enough to stop the Nixon-Brezhnev meetings.
The book is rich with anecdotes from Rabbi Kahane’s notes, speeches, and articles that appeared in the Jewish Press over many years. In addition to a few stints in prison in Israel, he also spent almost a full year in prison in the U.S. for crimes associated with protests that he organized and in which he participated in New York and Washington, DC. Even if you do not read the book in its entirety, it’s an important book to have in your library or even just to read a few chapters from time to time.
In one of the letters written to his children from a Jerusalem prison in 1972, he stated, “Thirty years ago (during the Holocaust) no one did what had to be done for Jews, and if someone had, he would have been condemned. Today, when Soviet Jews are faced with a catastrophe and the Israeli government knows of it and sells them out for Nixon’s favors, we cannot be quiet. It is the tragedy of the State of Israel that is so un-Jewish that—at Washington’s pressure—it arrests a Jew for doing what it should have done.
“In any case, do not worry. All important things are achieved through yisurim (suffering) and I always hope I will do and not only say what should be done. I will be home soon, with G-d’s help, and until then, remember what is important and what is not.”
Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.
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