Op-ed by Meir Jolovitz in Israel National News
He was a radical. And anti-establishment And he hated to see the Jew as victim after the bitter memory of a Holocaust when too few acted.
As part of the prepublicity for the most recent of a series of books that have been written during the past thirty-five years about Rabbi Meir Kahane, Internet sites dedicated to Israeli or Jewish affairs offered their readers a new invective, a preview of what I consider an academic diatribe. Three decades after the murder of the controversial rabbi, it seems transparent that the intent was to disparage and disgrace the man and his memory. In doing so, the truth fell victim. The truth about Kahane. And “Kahanism.”
The most recent manifestation of several previous studies of this type was the release of Shaul Magid’s Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical. The Dartmouth College professor, who is also affiliated with the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, presents us with a 296-page assault on a man whose place in modern Jewish history will long outlive all the attempts at armchair psychiatry.
Magid targets a reading audience which knows neither the real history of radical Jewish politics of the 1960s, 70s and 80s America, nor of the nationalist politics in Israel from 1970 through 1990. His study – of a man and his impact – offers a portrait that works only if one is unaware of the political, social, and psychological dynamics that fueled that generation of political activists – and their movement.
This work, to my mind, contains historical mistakes, non-facts written as facts. Space prohibits a detailed cross-examination which would expose research whose conclusion was already know, but the author describes what he sees as historic facts in such a manner that any reasonable reader will see how they corroborate his thesis.
Rabbi Meir Kahane was a radical. He was anti-establishment. But he also hated to see the Jew as victim. And he employed the bitter memory of a Holocaust that raged when too few acted. He too-often saw the world as black and white, and he responded accordingly, and angrily. He became the resident militant rabbi against an American backdrop whose landscape had become politically-charged. True, True, And true. In the face of societal and political issues affecting Jews, if Rabbi Meir Kahane did not exist – someone needed to invent him.
And, it seems, if one couldn’t find an author to castigate him – someone needed to invent one. Every number of years. Now, we have the most recent iteration with the publication of Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical.
The problem that the rabbi confronted then – more than fifty years ago when he established the Jewish Defense League – was the trouble he caused when his actions made noise. But it was a noise that needed to be heard.
Of course Rabbi Meir Kahane wasn’t the only innovator among Jews who stood up, historically, to rebel against anti-Semitism. But he was a voice representing a small minority – of another minority. As others before him had been. His heroes were Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Yosef Trumpledor, Menachem Begin, Shlomo Ben Yosef, Dov Gruner, Meir Feinstein, and their compatriots of the Irgun and Lehi in Eretz Yisrael.
It was their memory that motivated him – this too-small select group of modern Jewish warriors whose names were sadly unknown, or unspoken, in too-many Jewish homes. Certainly not in America. It was not, as Magid’s book would intimate, some psychobabble about the Black Panthers in New York or Chicago. For the rabbi – not yet a radical – it was about Jews standing up to be counted. However few.
But establishment Jewish leadership attacked him – vilified him – because if he was right, then they were wrong.
In Israel – during this period, the exploits of Rabbi Kahane in America were viewed, in the circles that mattered, as brazen. And heroic.
In the Soviet Union – the exploits of Rabbi Kahane and his JDL “hoodlums” were seen as brazen. And heroic.
In the poor sections of New York – where the ADL was not found – JDL leader Rabbi Kahane was seen by the frightened and forgotten senior citizens who his JDL members protected, as brazen, and heroic.
But, in the opulent offices of the American Jewish leaders – he was seen as brazen; and the enemy.
