I needed to break the interview into 2 parts because it was too long for one post.http://kahane.hameir.org/index.php/home/4?tmpl=component&print=1&page=&566166564424d62b3c3608660372b956=e2c40e04f78968353187a4c995b331e2 PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: MEIR KAHANE (October, 1972)
a candid conversation with the militant leader of the jewish defense league
(Playboy October, 1972)
PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: MEIR KAHANE (October, 1972)
Nearly every reader of a news magazine has heard of the Jewish Defense League and seen pictures of its tough-looking youths "patrolling" inner-city neighborhoods, training in karate, standing armed guard before the doors of synagogues. Many observers within and without the Jewish community see J.D.L. as an alarming phenomenon? prepared to use guns and even bombs to achieve its dubious ends, eager to in , crease both domestic and international tendons, intolerant of opposition, comparable in its approach to the Minute-men and the Weathermen.
The fact that it is a Jewish organization behaving this way has produced a good deal of astonishment. Although Jewish life in this country is far from monolithic?there are Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed and even nonpracticing Jews, whose observances differ markedly from one another?certain reasonable generalizations can be made about American Jews, and by these criteria, the Jewish Defense League is an anomaly. For a century, this country's I Jews have been moving outward from ghetto and shul, away from orthodoxy to full participation in the nation's life; . J. D. L. denounces these "secularist" tendencies and hearkens back to the Orthodox tradition. Since the Thirties, Jews have been identified with New Deal liberalism; J. D. L. heaps scorn upon liberalism and liberals. Young Jews played a prominent role in the civil rights demonstrations of the Sixties; Jewish lawyers have made careers of defending the civil liberties of others; Jewish citizens are on contributor lists for every underdog cause in the land; yet J. D. L. berates Jews for rushing to the defense of others and ignoring the sufferings of their own brothers and sisters. The major Jewish organizations are proud of their skill at resolving grievances around the conference table; J. D. L. has taken vociferously to the streets. Jews have won a reputation for avoiding violence; young J. D. L. members seek confrontations. Their slogan: "Never Again!"
Among J.D.L.'s more celebrated activities have been the following:
? Members of the National Renaissance Party, carrying GAS THE JEWS! signs at a Fifth Avenue parade marking an anniversary of Israel's independence, were roughed up by J. D. L. youths.
? When black leader James Forman threatened to interrupt services at New York's fashionable Temple Emanu-El with his demand for Jewish reparations to black citizens, about 30 J. D. L. members, equipped with clubs and chains, stationed themselves at the entrance to the temple and promised to break Forman's head if he should appear. He didn't.
? In response to the Soviet government's refusal to permit emigration of Russian Jews to Israel, and its arrest of Jewish dissidents, J. D. L. bands trailed members of the Soviet mission to the UN, calling them dirty names; J. D. L. also invaded offices of the Soviet trading company Amtorg.
? Last March, some J. D. L. members crashed a diplomatic reception in Washington and poured blood on the head of a Soviet official.
? In May, a dozen J. D. L. members staged a sit-in at the Austrian Embassy to protest the acquittal in Austria of a former SS concentration-camp guard. They hung a Nazi flag outside a window and traded blows with embassy officials.
Exploits widely attributed to J. D. L., although either denied or shrugged off with a grin by its spokesmen, have included:
? Open bottles of ammonia rolled down the aisles of Carnegie Hall, slopping a performance of the Siberian Dancers and Singers of Omsk.
? A bomb exploded in the doorway of the New York office of Aeroflot, the Soviet airline, and Intourist, the Soviet tourist agency, leading to the cancellation of a visit to this country by the Bolshoi Ballet.
? A bomb set off outside the Soviet cultural building in Washington.
? Four shots fired through a window of the Soviet mission to the United Nations.
? A bomb exploded in the Lebanese Consulate in Hollywood after the random shooting at Tel Aviv's Lod airport in May by Japanese gunmen allegedly trained in Lebanon.
? A fire bomb exploded, killing a young Jewish woman, in the New York offices of impresario Sol Hurok, prime importer of Soviet talent.
Four J. D. L. members were arrested in connection with the Hurok bombing and one at another booking agency the same day. Four others had been arrested a few weeks earlier, charged with conspiring to blow up the Long Island home occupied by the Soviet mission to the UN.
For its deeds, both admitted and alleged, J. D. L. has been denounced by every major Jewish organization in the country, as well as by officials on all levels of government. Yet it has persisted, growing to a claimed membership of 16,000?most of it, according to J. D. L. spokesmen, on the nation's campuses. This achievement is due almost entirely to one man, an Orthodox rabbi: Meir Kahane (pronounced Ka-hah-nee).
Born in Brooklyn 40 years ago, Kahane attended Jewish religious schools ?Yeshivas?but combined his spiritual orthodoxy with a passion for the New York Yankees that was most unorthodox in the Brooklyn of the legendary Dodgers. He won a, B. A. and a law degree at night school (and later an M. A. in international law), then served as a rabbi in Queens for a couple of years but found that role uncongenial. Today he doesn't claim to speak officially for any branch of American Judaism; he is, however, the voice of J. D. L. To learn more about this controversial organization and its reputedly authoritarian leader, PLAYBOY sent interviewer Walter Goodman to talk to Kahane. Goodman reports:
"Meir Kahane is a slight, dark man of quiet demeanor. At some time in his youth, he apparently forced himself to master a stutter; his tongue still falters occasionally, but the flow of ideas into words is remarkably fluent. His manner in private conversation is subdued, compared with his fiery manner on the platform, but now and then a twitch of his eyelid betrays the nervous energy within. A low-keyed humor continually finds its way into his conversation. While searching for a parking space on a crowded Brooklyn street, he remarked, 'Now, we'll see whether God is good today, or difficult.' After a moment, he added: 'He's always good and always difficult.'
"Kahane plans, in time, to settle in Israel?where J. D. L. now maintains an international office?and he contends that it would be prudent if all American Jews made similar plans. Last year he moved his family?wife and four children?there, where his father and grandfather were rabbis in the days be? fore the existence of the Jewish state. Kahane now commutes monthly between America and Israel and maintains so frenetic a schedule of speaking engagements, which are a major source of J. D. L. funds, that I had to fly with him from New York to Chicago just to get him to sit still for a couple of hours. It was a luncheon flight and the airline presented the rabbi on boarding with his specially ordered, Saran-wrapped kosher meal.
"When we next met, it was in a quite different setting, J. D. L. headquarters in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn building that is a cross between a deserted warehouse and a medieval dungeon. Prison, in fact, is something Kahane has often faced. He was first arrested at the age of 15, in 1947, for stoning the car of British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin. Since forming J. D. L. in the late Sixties, he's been held by the police several times. In 1971, he was convicted for his part in a bomb-making plot, and last May he was given three years on probation for inciting a riot in December 1970 outside the Soviet mission to the UN. Throughout all, he has behaved with the air of a man who believes himself perfectly justified in his actions. I began by asking him to explain why."
PLAYBOY: How do you justify J. D. L.'s advocacy of violence as a tactic?
KAHANE: As a general principle, if there is no need for violence, then even a little bit of it is bad. But if a crisis arises in which nothing can work but a great deal of violence, then not to use it is a tragedy. Was it more merciful not to go to war with the Nazis in 1935? Was it more moral, more ethical, more decent, more humane? I think it would have been a lot more humane for a lot of innocent people if we had gone to war then.
PIAYBOY: Some Jewish leaders have charged that your readiness to resort to violence contradicts the principles of Judaism.
KAHANE: When some so-called leader gets up and emotes about what is Jewish and what is not Jewish, it pains me, because I can't stand ignorance. If he owned an insurance business, I wouldn't have the chutzpah to argue with him about insurance. So let him not tell me, a rabbi, what is Jewish. Gandhi, a pacifist, was not a Jew. Moses was a Jew?and he smote the Egyptians.
PLAYBOY: Just how far are you willing to go in the use of violence?
KAHANE: As far as necessary. If an American Nazi Party leader posed a clear and present danger to American Jews, then not to assassinate such a person would be one of the most immoral courses I could imagine. I only wish that someone had assassinated Adolf Hitler in 1923.
PLAYBOY: How can you take upon yourself the responsibility of deciding whether or not to take someone's life?
KAHANE: You have an obligation to try to do things in a nice way. You have to give your antagonist an opportunity to change. But once you've given him that chance and it doesn't work, then I think you have an obligation?not just a right, an obligation?to move on to something that is not nice.
Topic: Rabbi Kahane Interview in Playboy Magazine Part 1 (Read 3622 times)