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