Meir Kahane: Radical Rabbi and Political Provocateur
Meir David HaKohen Kahane (August 1, 1932 – November 5, 1990) was an American-born Israeli Orthodox rabbi, writer, and politician. He founded the Israeli political party Kach, which promoted an ultra-nationalist ideology that continues to influence militant and far-right groups in Israel today.
Early Life and Education
Kahane was born in Brooklyn, New York, to an Orthodox Jewish family with deep rabbinic roots. His father, Yechezkel Shragei (Charles) Kahane, served as head of the Flatbush Board of Rabbis and authored Torah Yesharah. His grandfather Nachman Kahane was a leading rabbinic scholar in Safed, and his great-grandfather Baruch David Kahane immigrated to Ottoman Palestine from Poland in 1873.
As a teenager, Kahane became an admirer of Eri Jabotinsky and Peter Bergson, frequent guests in his parents’ home, and joined the Betar youth wing of Revisionist Zionism. In 1949, he was arrested for throwing eggs and tomatoes at British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin during a New York visit—an incident photographed by the New York Daily News.
His formal education included Yeshiva of Flatbush and Brooklyn Talmudical Academy. He received rabbinical ordination from the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn, where Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz held him in high regard. Kahane earned a B.A. in political science from Brooklyn College in 1954, an LL.B. from New York Law School, and an M.A. in International Relations from New York University.
Career and Achievements
In 1968, Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League in New York City, describing its purpose as fighting antisemitism. Several JDL members, including Kahane, were subsequently convicted of acts related to domestic terrorism. In 1975, JDL members led an attack on the Soviet United Nations mission. That same year, Kahane was convicted of conspiring to kidnap a Soviet diplomat, bomb the Iraqi embassy in Washington, and ship arms abroad from Israel. He served one year in prison, though in a hotel rather than a standard facility.
In 1971, Kahane moved to Israel and became a citizen. He initiated protests calling for the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories, leading to dozens of arrests. In 1980, he was arrested for the 62nd time since emigrating and jailed for six months for planning armed attacks against Palestinians. While imprisoned in Ramla, he wrote the book They Must Go.
In the 1984 Knesset elections, Kahane’s Kach party gained its first seat, which he occupied. He was barred from running in 1988. During his Knesset service in the mid-1980s, Kahane proposed numerous laws—none of which passed—to emphasize Judaism in public schools, reduce Israel’s bureaucracy, forbid marriages between Jews and non-Jews, separate Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, and end cultural meetings between Jewish and Arab students. He demanded that non-Jews in Israel could not be elected, could not live in Jerusalem, and must assume specific taxes and duties or face deportation.
Notable Events and Milestones
Kahane founded Kach in 1971, though it initially failed to gain Knesset seats. The party’s ultra-nationalist platform called for enforcing halakha (Jewish law) as codified by Maimonides and advocated the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Kahane popularized the slogan “For Every Jew a .22 rifle” and insisted that Jews must be “forbidden to give up any part of the Land of Israel, which has been liberated.”
On November 5, 1990, Kahane was assassinated while giving a speech to an audience of Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn at which he urged American Jews to emigrate to Israel. His assassin was El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-American national. Kahane was buried in West Jerusalem.
Additional Resources
Kahane’s life and political legacy remain subjects of historical study and debate. Readers seeking more detailed information about his activism, ideology, and influence on Israeli and American Jewish politics can consult Wikipedia’s comprehensive biography and other historical archives documenting twentieth-century Middle Eastern politics and Jewish political movements.
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