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KAHANE, MEIR 1932-1990

JEWISH RABBI; MILITANT JEWISH ACTIVIST

Beginnings

Martin David Kahane was born in Brooklyn, the son of a distinguished Hassidic family. His father, a rabbi of an Orthodox synagogue, was an ardent Zionist, working actively to support the Jews in Palestine before the creation of Israel. Meir, as he would later call himself, grew up with both his politics and religion intertwined. In 1946 he joined Betar, a quasi-military, international youth movement which aimed at protecting Jewish people from their enemies. Clearly this involvement was the source of Kahane's cofounding of the Jewish Defense League several years later.

Education

Kahane was educated in Talmud schools but graduated from a public high school in Brooklyn. He attended Brooklyn College and took a law degree from New York University, but he never took the state bar examination. He married, had four children, and served in the late 1950s as rabbi of the Howard Beach Jewish Center, where he generated opposition from the adults by his inculcating what they considered extreme religious and ethnic ideas in their children.

Political Activities

In the 1960s Kahane entered a period of life that he never made clear, but apparently he became an FBI informant, infiltrating and reporting on various groups including the right-wing John Birch Society. As the U.S. became more deeply involved in the war in Vietnam, he attempted to organize prowar support on college campuses. Kahane also began writing for the conservative Jewish Press, an Orthodox publication that became his major avenue to his followers in the Orthodox community.

Jewish Defense League

In 1968 Kahane was one of the three founders of the Jewish Defense League (JDL). The JDL, created in the euphoria that followed the Six-Day War of 1967, was designed to assert Jewish pride and power in the racial politics of New York City. Tension was increasing between militant blacks, who were adopting an openly anti-Semitic rhetoric, and the large population of older Jews left in declining neighborhoods as people fled the city for the suburbs. The JDL played on the memories of the Holocaust with its slogan "Never Again" and to the pride in the Israeli success in the Six-Day War with the slogan "Every Jew a .22,"

Publicity

While the JDL seemed to promise to protect these weak and elderly Jews from the presumed threat of young, black toughs, its highly publicized actions, often violent, heightened tension in the city during the great school strike of 1968-1969. In one of the periodic attempts to improve school performance, small, local boards were created to control neighborhood schools. In some black districts these boards reassigned teachers and principals, sometimes in violation of established procedures. The teachers union, with a large Jewish membership, responded with a strike and demonstrations. The JDL was the self-protector of union members and attracted some followers from that group.

Anti-Soviet Demonstrations

By 1969 and 1972 Kahane, whose charismatic personality and lust for publicity made him the central figure of the JDL, turned his attention to international politics when he focused on the plight of Jews who were being denied permission to leave the Soviet Union. The JDL demonstrated at Soviet agencies in New York City, occupying offices, harassing Soviet officials, and exploding bombs which damaged Soviet property. These highly publicized anti-Soviet actions attracted the attention of politicians in Washington as well as New York. The plight of Soviet Jews became an American political issue and a cause for tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Further Militant Actions

In 1971 Kahane was arrested and pleaded guilty in federal court for conspiring to manufacture firebombs. He was given a sentence of four years probation and was prohibited from having any firearms or contact with people or groups with arms. That year Kahane left the United States for Israel, where he established a branch of the JDL, His penchant for violence and publicity continued. He was tried three times in Israel for his agitation against Arabs but did not serve a prison sentence. In 1975 his probation in the United States was revoked, and he served a year for violation of the terms of his probation as he continued his campaign of violence against Communists and Arabs.

Campaign for Israeli Parliament

Observers, whether friends or critics, had trouble deciphering Kahane's intentions from the contradictions of his remarks and actions in these early years in Israel. Instead of joining either the conservative party of Menachem Begin or one of the religious parties, Kahane organized his own political party, Kach

Theories

In The Jewish Idea (1974) he articulated his beliefs that the Arab presence polluted the essence and spirit of Judaism and that their expulsion was necessary for the redemption of the Jewish people. He asserted that the history of the Jews revealed the working of a divine pledge through time which would culminate with the return of the Messiah. This would mean the annexation of the Occupied Territories, which he called Judea and Samaria, and the construction of a new temple on the site of King David's original structure.

Increasing Controversy

As Kahane's racism became more strident, he continued to offend the governments of both Israel and the United States. Israel for a time held up his passport, keeping him from his periodic trips to the United States, and the U.S. later attempted to revoke his passport when he was finally elected to the Knesset. He also had difficulty with the American leadership of the JDL, who became concerned with new revelations of Kahane's womanizing. They believed publicity about such affairs would demolish an organization which had carefully preached morality and ethics. In spite of his opposition, Kahane managed to maintain his control of the JDL and Kach