Fresh off the press:
RABBI MEIR KAHANE: His Life and Thought (Volume One: 1932-1975) by Libby KahaneFrom 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
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Topic: BIOGRAPHY: RABBI MEIR KAHANE: His Life and Thought (1932-1975) by Libby Kahane (Read 876 times)