1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910554275703321

Autore

Magid Shaul <1958->

Titolo

Meir Kahane : the public life and political thought of an American Jewish radical / / Shaul Magid

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Princeton, New Jersey : , : Princeton University Press, , [2021]

ISBN

0-691-21266-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xiii, 276 pages)

Disciplina

328.5694/092

B

Soggetti

Political activists - Israel

Rabbis - Israel

Political activists - New York (State) - New York

Rabbis - New York (State) - New York

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: Why Kahane? -- 1. Liberalism: Kahane in context: radicalism and liberalism in 1960s American Jewry -- 2. Radicalism: radical bedfellows: Meir Kahane and the “New Jews” in the late 1960s -- 3. Race and racism: Kahane on race and Judeopessimism -- 4. Communism: Vietnam and Soviet Jewry: Kahane's battle against communism -- 5. Zionism: Kahane's Zionism: the political experiment of abnormality and its tragic demise -- 6. Militant post-Zionist apocalypticism: Kahane's the Jewish idea.

Sommario/riassunto

The life and politics of an American Jewish activist who preached radical and violent means to Jewish survivalMeir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968, declaring that Jews must protect themselves by any means necessary. He immigrated to Israel in 1971, where he founded KACH, an ultranationalist and racist political party. He would die by assassination in 1990. Shaul Magid provides an in-depth look at this controversial figure, showing how the postwar American experience shaped his life and political thought.Magid sheds new light on Kahane’s radical political views, his critique of liberalism, and his



use of the “grammar of race” as a tool to promote Jewish pride. He discusses Kahane’s theory of violence as a mechanism to assure Jewish safety, and traces how his Zionism evolved from a fervent support of Israel to a belief that the Zionist project had failed. Magid examines how tradition and classical Jewish texts profoundly influenced Kahane’s thought later in life, and argues that Kahane’s enduring legacy lies not in his Israeli career but in the challenge he posed to the liberalism and assimilatory project of the postwar American Jewish establishment.This incisive book shows how Kahane was a quintessentially American figure, one who adopted the radicalism of the militant Left as a tenet of Jewish survival.