Rabbi Meir Kahane z'l by Paul Eidelberg

Beyond Words
Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,
1960-1990
Volume 7
“Beyond Words” is a newly-published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings that originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his privately-published works.
“Beyond Words” also includes a number of extra features:
Chronology of Rabbi Kahane's life.
Index of articles by subject, title, and Torah sources.
If interested in buying Rabbi Meir Kahane writings in this 7-volume collection write to
Levi Chazan at: Levi1@hotmail.com For people outside of Israel “Beyond Words” in soft cover is in the printing process and will shortly be sold at Amazon.com   

Rabbi Meir Kahane, z”l
Written by Paul Eidelberg

He told the truth, and he died for the truth.  He told the truth about the implacable Arab-Islamic hatred of the Jews and of Israel.  He told the truth about Israel’s government, that this government is the greatest enemy of the Jewish people.  He told the truth about the many Reform and Conservative and Moderdox rabbis who feared the truth and prevented him from appearing and speaking the truth at their temples and synagogues.
It was because he told the truth about the Arabs, who now applaud Saddam Hussein and scream “Itbach al-Yahud” – “Slaughter the Jews” – that he was called a “facist.”  It was because he told the truth about the many rabbis who betrayed Torah Judaism for the baubles of popularity that he was called a “Khomeini.”

He told the truth, and he died for the truth.  He told the truth about the countless Arabs, including Arab citizens of Israel, who keep not one of the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality.  He told the truth about Moslems who blaspheme against the G-d of Israel, who worship blood and glory in bloodshed, who murder and rape and mutilate each other, as well as Jews.

He told the truth about a government that lacks the courage to protect its own people from the stones and firebombs and knives of Arabs.  He told the truth about a government steeped in falsehood, a government that speaks peace, peace with a people that knows only war.  He told the truth about a government that enacted a law making it illegal to tell the truth about that people.  For this reason only was he barred from the Knesset – yea, with the help of a High Court of Injustice that allowed PLO spokesmen to remain in that miscreant assembly.

He told the truth, and was vilified by liars.  He spoke with courage, and was attacked by cowards.  He was barred from universities that welcomed PLO propagandists.  He defended Jews and justice, and was treated as a pariah.  His voice in the Knesset was a voice in the wilderness, but his words reached beyond its walls and enlightened the minds of honest Jews.

He worked tirelessly for Klal Yisrael .  He helped countless Jews in Israel and abroad.  He spoke words of Torah and brought Jewish souls back to Judaism.  His gifted articles – alas, we shall have them no more – illuminated events obscured by official darkness.  He articulated the hopes and sentiments of normal people.  He lifted their hearts, he rallied them to a cause, and he died for that cause.

He suffers no more.  But we who mourn our loss, we who feel the emptiness created by his passing, we who were strengthened by his words, let us keep his faith and carry on the struggle for which he died – the struggle for Truth.

Editor’s note:  Paul Eidelberg (Ph.D. University of Chicago), is a professor of political science at Bar Ilan University and the author of many books.
Written in The Jewish Press, November 9, 1990

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Self -Destructive Jewish Guilt - 1988

Self-Destructive Jewish Guilt

By Rabbi Meir Kahane

{May G-d avenge his blood. Has history proven him wrong?}

(January, 1988)

There is a specter haunting Israel and its American Jewish supporters. It is called guilt. Guilt over the "repression of Palestinian human rights". Guilt over the refusal to remove "the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East - the occupation of the Arab land seized in 1967". Guilt over the unwillingness to give the "Palestinians" their own state in the "occupied lands". And now, guilt over the killing of "Palestinians" and innocent civilians in the "Occupied territories". It is a powerful weapon, this guilt; Jews have a difficult time coping with it.

A people that has been the most debased of losers for 2,000 years finds it difficult to cope with victory. It finds it extraordinary difficult to remain normal. It inherits insecurities, complexes, guilt. It begins to believe its enemies' slanders. It loses its self-respect and longs for the love of a hating world. That is especially true for the Jewish liberal! It is important that those who have retained their self-esteem and sense of Jewish survival speak out against the disease of guilt and moral insecurity. No guilt.

Are the lands of 1967, "occupied" by the Jews, the main obstacle to peace? Is the year 1967 the origin of the conflict? How peaceful it must have been in 1966 when Sinai and Gaza were in Egyptian hands and the Golan was possessed by the Syrians to shell, for 19 years, the Jewish settlements below, and when Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem were in the hands of the "moderate" King Hussein. Why did they go to war? What did they want then? When they had all the "occupied lands" before they were "occupied"? When one has East Jerusalem and attacks Israel, can it be that he desires West Jerusalem? And Tel Aviv? And can it be that that is what they really want again? Now? And why did the "innocent Palestinian women and children" take to the streets then, in 1967, when Jordan and Egypt ruled them to call for "Israel in the sea"? What "occupied lands" did they want back then? And could it be that that is what they want now?

And what did they wish in 1947 when they rejected the "Palestine" state offered them by the United Nations and went to war, killing fully 1 % of the Jewish population? And what did they wish in the riots of 1936-38 when there was no country called Israel and they murdered more than 500 Jews? And in 1929 when no "Zionist occupation troops" were in Hebron, why did the "Palestinians" rise up to murder 67 Jews in one day? And why the pogroms in Jerusalem and Jaffa in 1920 and 1921?

What troubles the Arabs is the very presence of large numbers of Jews in the land, and Israel of any size. Zionism. That is what troubles the Arabs. That is the obstacle to peace. Let us inscribe that on our hearts lest we open the doors to a repetition-on a grand scale-of that which the Arabs have done to Jews since 1920. A horror of slaughter by knives and axes. And the bearers of guilt would do just that.

No guilt. There is one sublime reason why we should not give up a centimeter of land...it belongs to us. If we have no right to Judea and Samaria and Gaza, then we indeed have no right to Tel Aviv. Abraham did not walk on Dizengoff Street nor did our ancestors live in Israeli cities that were built in the 20th century. But Abraham, who lived in Hebron, and Jacob who lived in Shechem, now Nablus, and David in Bethlehem are the sole legitimate reasons that Jews can lay claim to a Tel Aviv and the kibbutzim of the guilt-ridden Left. The land belongs to us because the G-d of Israel, creator and Titleholder of all lands, gave it to us. No guilt.

There is no such thing as a "Palestinian people". They are Arabs, part of the Arab nation, possessor of 21 lands. Let them live in peace in any or all of them. But there are no "Palestinians". It was the Roman emperor Hadrian who, after the Jewish revolt against the Romans, angrily erased the name of the state, Judea, and invented the name "Palestine" after the Philistines. In every normal case, an existing people gives its name to a land. The Franks named it France and the Angles, England, and the Germanics, Germany. Only in this ludicrous case does a Roman invent a name, give it to a land, and the arriving Arab trespassers become "Palestinians". One presumes that had Hadrian not changed the name, Israel today would be fighting Yasir Arafat and the Judean terrorists. There are no "Palestinians" and there is no "Palestine" in the land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael. No guilt.

The "Palestinian" civilians in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Lebanon cheered and supported every P.L.O murder and terror of Jews. They are united in hatred of Israel. It would be nicer if they did not stone our soldiers and try to kill Jews. It would be nicer if they did not rise up in revolt in order to force us out of Judea, Samaria and Gaza as the first step to the elimination of the State of Israel. But since they do, let Jews not allow themselves to be destroyed by "Palestinian" women and children. And if the only way to survive is to take the lives of people who attack us we have no choice. I wonder how many Americans and British and French mourned and protested the killing of German civilians during World War II bombings of Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden?

There is nothing ethical about dying or anything moral about another holocaust. There is nothing immoral about winning and nothing necessarily noble in a loser. Let us cast off the chains of guilt and reject the accusations of its bearers. The greatness of Judaism is its spirit, but no spirit can survive without a living body. If we do not want to kill Arabs--and we don't; and if we want to put an end to the nightly television pictures of violence; and if we do not want to see those pictures tomorrow inside Israel itself, with Israeli Arabs fighting soldiers; and if we do not want to see the threat of Arab demography destroying the Jewish State--then let us have the courage to take the one difficult but immutable step that will free us of all this and guarantee a Jewish State: Remove the Arabs from the land and let them live with their brothers and sisters in any of the 22 Arab states. Anything short of that will see the horrors of today escalated a hundred-fold tomorrow. And let us not fear the world. Those who stood by during the Holocaust and when Israel faced destruction in 1948 and 1967 have nothing to tell us.

Faith in the G-d of Israel and a powerful Jewish army are the only guarantors of Jewish survival. Let us not fear the world. Far better a Jewish State that survives and is hated by the world, than an Auschwitz that brings us its love and sympathy. No guilt Rather faith in G-d and a return to authentic Torah laws; rather pride and strength, and the love of our people rather than the enemy that would destroy us. That is sanity; that is Judaism.

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Are you listening Jew? - 1989

Beyond Words

Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,

1960-1990

Volume 6

“Beyond Words” is a newly-published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings that originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his privately-published works.

“Beyond Words” also includes a number of extra features:

Chronology of Rabbi Kahane's life.

Index of articles by subject, title, and Torah sources.

Watch for “Beyond Words” to be sold at Amazon.com    

Are You Listening, Jew?

Rabbi Ya’akov Emden (Yavetz) was one of the great halachic authorities of his time.  He lived in Hamburg at a time when – despite general belief – the Jews were already beginning to acclimate to society and live comfortably.  And in the introduction (Sulam Beit El) to his famous siddur (Prayer Book), he wrote the following remarkable words – a cry to the Jew in the Exile:

  Not one in a thousand arouses himself to dwell in the Land (of Israel).          
Only one from a town and two from a family.  No one seeks its love, desires its peace and good and wants to see it.  It appears to us as we sit in comfort in the Exile that we have already discovered another Land of Israel and another Jerusalem.  And that is why there came upon us all the evils when we sat in Spain and other lands in comfort and great honor since the time of the Destruction … until we were later driven from there and not a trace was left of Jews in those countries.

And he concludes with words that shake the firmaments of the Jewish world:

How long will you sleep, O lazy one, in the bed of laziness … until the foundations of the universe shall be uncovered!  And why shall you not acquire for yourself wise counsel to flee for your life while you yet may?

Stunning, powerful, awesome words from a halachic giant, Rabbi Ya’akov Emden!  And the Jew hears nothing.  And why should we be surprised?  Why should we be astonished that the Jew fails to hear the words that echo from the eighteenth century, from Hamburg, German, when he cannot hear the cry of Bensonhurst?

I arrived in the United States for two weeks in time to see and hear the awesome cry of Rabbi Ya’ akov Emden – this time from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.  And I look about me at the Jew who apparently is blind to what is so obvious; so deaf to the screeching sounds about him, and so dumb – both in inability to express the reality and to understand it.

In the cold-blooded murder of a black youth in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, lies the reality of America, and the impossible dilemma for the Jews of that country who, like those of so many generations of Exile past, thought, in the words of Rabbi Ya’akov Emden, that “they had discovered another Land of Israel and another Jerusalem.”

Bensonhurst lies in White America, attacked to Boro Park – land of Jewish certainty and assurance that herein lies yet another Eretz Yisrael and Jerusalem.  Bensonhurst is an almost all-white enclave that, incredibly, brings comfort and security to the Jews who live there or who border on it.  And in Bensonhurst a young man was gunned down because he was black – and the Jew heard nothing and understood nothing and felt not the slightest alarm.  Indeed, G-d help us, there were not a few who agreed with the white gentiles that blacks who come into the neighborhood risk receiving what the murdered black man got.

Does no one see?  Does not the Jew understand what the lesson of Bensonhurst is?  Does not one look at the faces and souls of the Bensonhurst whites who stood jeering and taunting blacks and shouting “niggers,” and understand that the bells toll for him?  Is there not a Jew who saw the hate and venom and willingness to murder, and understood that those same faces and same haters and same people could, tomorrow, just as easily and willingly do the same to the Jew?  Does the Jew not understand what he is hearing?  Is the Jew listening?  Does he want to listen?  Does he want to understand that haters are not capable of being limited in their hatred to one particular people that is different?  That those who hate blacks hate Jews, too, and perhaps even more?  That hatred is a disease that enters the marrow of the bones and emerges in all its horrors whenever social or economic or psychological conditions drive it out into action?

What is it about the Jew that fails to make him understand that the hater, the bigot, the murderer of the black man today will be the destroyer of the Jew, tomorrow?

There is a host on a large New York City radio station.  He is immensely popular with Jews, especially those of Brooklyn.  He is a bigot and a hater – albeit a clever one.  And how the Jews love it when he, in his viciousness, goes up against a “shwartzer.”

And I remember once, driving in an automobile and listening to the man as an Hispanic caller phoned in.  How the radio host-bigot ridiculed the man’s accent!  How he humiliated the man because of that accent that was different from the “American” one.  And the very next caller fairly fell over himself in delight and congratulations to the host for how he handled the foreigner.  The caller who was so delighted was from Brooklyn and had a Hungarian accent thick enough to serve with goulash under the light of his chandelier and the happy smiles of his wife under her sheitel

It is more than blind and needless hate that I cry out against.  It is the fact that the Jew hears the haters of Bensonhurst crying out their bigotry and does not hear the unspoken word, “Jew!”  For those thugs and gross hooligans and ignoramuses hate Jews with more passion than they do blacks.  For what they really feel about blacks is fear, but they hate Jews.  They are jealous of them and envious, and no greater hate emerges than from that .  What did Solomon say: “Wrath is cruel and anger is overwhelming, but who is able to stand before jealousy?” (Proverbs 27:4).

The same ones who murder blacks, and hate and fear them and curse them and  “make the neighborhood safe,” are those who sit in their bars muttering about Jews in frightening envy and jealousy that breeds the most awesome hatred of them all.  They are a danger to the very survival of Jews and G-d help us all should there be an economic collapse that will drive them into unemployment and desperation and loosen the social chains that bind them.

And that is the dilemma.  For the black community is one that is riddled with Jew-hatred.  Real hard-core hatred of Jews.  And much more open and much more “legitimate” than the kind that is endemic to whites.  Not only is a Jesse Jackson capable of making outrageous anti-Jewish comments and yet remain a legitimate national figure and candidate for the Presidency, but on every campus in American the local black student group can issue openly anti-Jewish statements and not be condemned, let alone lose its college funding.  Black papers and radio

stations can spew forth anti-Jewish hate, and the FCC and political leaders are strangely silent.  The fact is that, despite the obscene refusal of Jewish liberals to condemn black Jew-hatred but rather to rationalize it away, blacks in great measure and in huge numbers hate Jews.

And that despair grips a Jew from Israel as he sees, on the one hand, the mindless, ugly faces of the Bensonhurst whites with their Jew-hatred barely beneath the surface, while at the funeral of the black youth, Farrakhan and his black-faced brownshirts arrived.  The fact that they allowed the black Nazi Farrakhan to speak, and not one black leader protested (and naturally not a white politician dared to), underlies the despair and the hopelessness of the situation for the Jew.

On the one hand, a black community that has made anti-Semitism an integral part of its existence.  On the other, far more dangerous white majority Jew-hating class.  And that for the Jew is the real meaning of Bensonhurst and America that is riven, polarized, riddled with hate and violence that is held back only by economic prosperity.  But behind that dam lie the waters of hate and envy and jealousy.  And it is the Jew who is the target.

The Jew who saw and heard the faces and voices of Bensonhurst, the hate and violence and taunts, and who saw nothing and heard nothing.  And the voice of Rabbi Ya’akov Emden comes across the ages, crying:  Are you listening, Jew?   And the Jew does not even hear that.

Written September 1989

Editor’s note:  Jacob Emden (1697-1776), rabbi, halachic authority, kabbalist.  Emden was regarded as one of the outstanding scholars of his generation.  Despite his distinguished descent and his remarkable Talmudic attainments, Emden occupied no official position, with the exception of a few years as rabbi of Emden, Germany.  This made it possible for him to be exceptionally critical toward the society and the tradition of his time.  In addition, he published an important edition of the prayer book (whose parts had different names) with a valuable commentary (1745-48.  There were six Jews living in Emden in 1967.

(Source: Encyclopedia Judaica, 1972 edition)

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TERROR! - 1988

Beyond Words

Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,

1960-1990

Volume 6

“Beyond Words” is a newly-published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings that originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his privately-published works.

“Beyond Words” also includes a number of extra features:

Chronology of Rabbi Kahane's life.

Index of articles by subject, title, and Torah sources.

Shortly  “Beyond Words” will be sold on Amazon.com

TERROR!

For the Jew, the worst of terror is not some “Palestinian” gang, but the frightening thought that the United States will stop supporting Israel.  That is the specter that haunts the Jew; that is the terror that gives neither sleep to his eyes nor slumber to his eyelids.

On the one hand, the Jew is gripped by fear of the gentile and on the other, by the perceived need of the gentile.  Both psychoses stem from the same tragic source:  Lack, utter lack of faith and belief in the L-rd, G-d of Israel.  And lacking faith, the Jew of practicality also lacks total understanding of Jewish destiny.

“The exiles will not be ingathered except through the merit of faith.”  The words of the Rabbis in the Mechilta (B’shalach).  A statement based on the verse of Hosea (3:22): “And I will betroth thee unto me in faith, and thou shalt know the L-rd.”  It adds nothing to Jewish merit that this verse is said daily by the Jew who puts on the tefillin.  And to whom it means nothing.

A clearer statement could hardly be found.  The exiles will not be ingathered except through faith.  Does anyone believe it?  Really believe it?  Really take the words seriously?  Does the Jew who is spellbound and convinced of the magical efficacy of Ronald Reagan and the miracle of American aid really believe that the only way of betrothal to G-d is through perfect faith and belief that G-d is the One who can save the Jew – the only one?

Hardly.  The decision by the gentiles in Washington to begin talks with the PLO led to a combination of surprise, shock, fear and foreboding from Jews who are totally convinced that the United States is beginning the abandonment of Israel and that without the United States, Israel cannot survive.  Small people; little people of little faith.

Just as the first Jew was chosen because he believed, because he had faith in G-d and was prepared to stand alone against an entire world (as it is said [Genesis 15:6]: “And he believed in the L-rd, and He counted it to him for righteousness”), and just as the Jews of Egypt were saved in the first redemption only through faith (as it is said [Exodus 4:31] “And the people believed”}, so shall the final redemption of the children of the first Jew come about only through faith.  And indeed, it is the only way the redemption of glory and majesty can come.

The Jew will never believe as long as he has even one ally.  For as long as he is not alone, he will always maintain that his survival is due to the “ally.”  People of little faith cannot ever have the strength to think anything else.  THAT IS WHY THE ALMIGHTY WILL GUARANTEE THAT THERE WILL BE NO ALLIES.  For only when there is absolutely no one upon whom the Jew can lean and thus delude himself, only then, when faced with absolute hopelessness, will the Jew – with no other choice – turn to the All Mighty.

And so, the beginning of the end of the delusion of American support is the beginning, too, of the end of the delusion that Israel’s survival depends on the gentile.  It does not.  And so, cease the hand-wringing and the moaning.  The Americans are not relevant to Jewish survival.  The Russians are not relevant to Jewish survival. Only the All Mighty is.  And because we do not believe it, we are about to embark on the painful process of learning it the hard way.

How foolish of us!  How needlessly we bring on ourselves tragedy!  Cease our dependence on the gentile and return to the L-rd.  Faith in G-d and a powerful Jewish arm will bring us the redemption in glory and majesty.

Written on December 23, 1988

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