Kahane Lives

If you are looking to make sense of the seismic shift that has taken place in Israel’s Knesset this past month, then a good point of reference would be the events surrounding Israel’s elections in 1984. As Professor Shaul Magid explains in his fabulous book Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical, after two failed attempts, Meir Kahane was elected to the Knesset with one seat as leader of his Kach political party. For those unfamiliar with Meir Kahane and his political thought (and who have yet to listen to my interview with Shaul Magid on Park Avenue Synagogue Podcasts), not only did Kahane reject the idea that Israel could be both Jewish and democratic, but his political platform included (but was not limited to) a prohibition against communion with non-Jews, a mandatory prison sentence for any Arab who had sexual relations with a Jewish woman, and a call to strip all Israeli Arabs of their citizenship and expel any who refused to relinquish it. So outrageous were Kahane’s politics, that even then Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir (himself a radical militant in pre-state Palestine) refused to allow Kahane into his coalition. So contemptible was Kahane’s platform, that the Knesset made the unprecedented decision to amend the country’s basic laws to bar “racist candidates,” an amendment that rendered Kahane’s Kach party illegal. Kahane’s appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court was denied, thus barring him from running again and putting an end to his political career. (Magid, pp. 77-78) Although Kahane was killed in 1990, his ideology did not die, and to this point we shall turn. The activities of the offshoot group Kahane Chai (“Kahane Lives”) continued, ranging from graffiti proclaiming Kahane Tzadak (“Kahane was right”) to, most horrifically, the massacre of twenty-nine Palestinian Muslim worshippers at Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994.

All of which I would ask you to keep in mind as we turn our attention to last month’s election. Despite the fact that the margin in the popular vote between the “pro-Netanyahu” camp and the “anti-Netanyahu” camp was a narrow 30,000 votes, the Knesset coalition, to put it mildly, has undergone a rightward shift. With a December 21 coalition deadline looming, Netanyahu has doled out a series of portfolios and promises in order to cobble together the sixty-plus seat majority needed to form a governing majority. In no particular order: Avi Maoz of the far-right Noam party, who campaigned on a platform against LGBT rights, in favor of conversion therapy, increased gender separation, and declarations equating non-Orthodox Judaism with forces of darkness, received one seat. Unlike Kahane, however, Maoz and his platform were not outlawed; he was awarded the ministry of Jewish identity, a portfolio overseeing all of Israel’s informal Jewish education. Aryeh Deri, the leader of the Shas party, is slated to become interior and health minister, assuming of course that legislation can be passed to allow Deri, who received a suspended sentence for tax fraud, to actually serve in a ministerial post. As of the writing of this sermon, no agreement has been reached between Netanyahu and United Torah Judaism, but their list of demands includes everything from blanket exemptions from military service for the ultra-Orthodox to banning all non-Orthodox prayer at the Western Wall to barring the production of electricity on Shabbat. As for Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party – a man who has called for segregated Arab and Jewish maternity wards, who has called Reform Judaism a fake religion, who as recently as last month has fueled conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and who has called for the dismantling of Israel’s Law of Return – Smotrich has been promised a ministry within the defense ministry that arguably makes him de facto Prime Minister of the West Bank. To round it all out, Otzma Yehudit’s leader Itamar Ben Gvir – a man who has referred to Meir Kahane as his mentor, who has been arrested for incitement, who until recently had a picture of the perpetrator of the Hebron massacre on his wall, who shortly before Rabin’s assassination ripped the hood ornament off the Prime Minister’s car declaring, “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him, too,” and who, in the weeks since the election, attended a memorial honoring Meir Kahane – not only has Ben Gvir been designated the national security minister with oversight over the police, but he has been awarded the portfolio with powers far exceeding the very system of checks and balances aimed at assuring that politics never colors the decision-making of the police.

There is much more to say. I haven’t even touched on the proposed override bill that could fundamentally undermine Israel’s democracy. Every day seems to bring a jarring new announcement. There is no shortage of analysis on who is to blame for the collapse of Israel’s center left, on squaring the circle of the divided popular vote and the rightward swing of the Knesset coalition, on whether it is coalition politics or the prospect of criminal prosecution that is prompting Netanyahu to make each deal, and on whether this is indeed a political earthquake or just the formalization of a process which, like the US Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, has been a long time in coming. All these things are and will continue to be debated, but the headline is clear. Not only has the once-outlawed anti-hero ideology of Kahane been legalized, sanitized, and mainstreamed, but the ideological heirs of the ultranationalist, xenophobic, anti-democratic and violent movement have been given the keys to the castle. Kahane, it would seem, is alive and well and sitting in the Knesset.

I thought long and hard about what, if anything, to say this morning. Better, perhaps, to stay behind the scenes, work quietly to effectuate change, and not air the dirty laundry of the Jewish people in public. Rabbi, your job is to get people to love Israel, not question it. If you, the rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue, criticize Israel, does that not provide cover to anti-Zionists and antisemites to unleash their unchecked vitriol against the Jewish state and Jewish people? You don’t live in Israel. You don’t vote there or serve there. Stick to what you know, Rabbi. Talk to your Jews about Kanye and Kyrie, not Kahane. Be our diaspora cheerleader if it makes you feel good, but please keep your criticisms of Israel to yourself.

While I acknowledge and openly name the arguments that would counsel me otherwise, for the sake of Zion, I cannot be silent. Why? First and foremost – because I love Israel. I love Israel because it is the national Jewish home. I love Israel because it is home to half of world Jewry. I love the half of the Israeli electorate with whose politics I agree, and while I may not like the other half, and they may not like me, I do love them. I vociferously object to the emerging policies of Israel’s government in formation, but no different than my objections to the policies of this or that American administration are understood to be expressions of my American patriotism, so too in the case of Israel and my Zionism. If anything, my defense of Israel in the face of its detractors becomes more, not less, forceful in my acknowledging Israel’s shortcomings, in distinguishing between half of Israel’s population and the circus of the Knesset.

Silence comes with a cost. If we learn nothing else from this morning’s story of Joseph, we should learn the pitfalls of excessive coddling. Had Jacob called on his son Joseph to self-correct rather than persist in his excesses, the brothers might not have thrown Joseph into the pit in the first place. American Jews do not vote in Israel, but our silence has served as an enabler. Leaders have to lead both in their support and in their calls to self-correct not only when it is easy and popular, but also when – perhaps especially when – it is not. This year, 2022, has been the deadliest year for Israelis and Palestinians in a long time. Over thirty Israelis and 150 Palestinians killed, with some saying the third intifada has already begun – we just haven’t named it yet as such. There is no shortage of blame to go around; the divisions, failures, and incendiary words and actions of the Palestinians are well known to all. But we must resist pointing to their shortcomings in order to avoid turning the mirror on ourselves. There is a correlation between vitriol and violence, between hatred and hopelessness. Why must we speak out? Because, as May of 2021 taught us, no matter the progress of the Abraham Accords, the world of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Israelis is a tinderbox waiting to be set aflame by a single match. No different than the Israelis protesting on the streets of Tel Aviv every Saturday night, we must speak out because we love Israel, because we pray for Israel’s safety, and because we work towards securing Israel’s long-term well-being.

I fear for the short-, medium-, and long-term effects of an Israel that does not acknowledge American Jews as Jews. An Israel whose elected officials would not deign to enter our synagogue. An Israel whose government is passing legislation that is actively severing the connection between future generations of diaspora Jewry and the Jewish state. I fear for the time – a time which is now – when the expressed values of the elected arms of the Jewish state run contrary to the values that are most dear to me as a Jew. A time when I will be asked to choose between my Jewish values and my support for Israel. I fear for the time in the not-too-distant future when a generation of Jews come of age having been told explicitly and implicitly that their Judaism is not Judaism, that their rabbis are not rabbis, that they are not Jews, so that be it good times or bad, when Israel comes calling for support, that call is left unanswered. I am speaking out now because I care about the well-being of Israel and because I care about the well-being of American Jewry’s relationship with Israel.

Since day one, I have made it clear that for me personally and for our synagogue as a whole, Jewish identity goes hand-in-hand with Israel engagement. It is why this week we are sending three busloads – over 100 people – to Israel, and why we will do so again in June. It is why our spring programming will aim to celebrate, embrace, and engage Israel as it turns seventy-five. I am leaning in. I am all in. But I am sounding the alarm. Rabbis are supposed to have answers. Today I know I don’t have them. What I say today is meant to be the first word, not the final word. We have entered into a new chapter for Israel, for American Jews, and for the relationship between the two. Those of us who love Israel and who are invested in the relationship – which I hope we all are – we need to face our new reality, speak openly and candidly of our present dilemma in our congregation, in our families, and everywhere, and we need to chart our path forward together.

Tomorrow evening, Jews in America, in Israel, and around the world, will kindle their Hanukkah lights. For some, the miracle of Hanukkah goes back to the spark of every Jewish soul. Not by might and not by power, but by spirit alone is the radiant light of Jewish life to be shared with the entire world. For others, the miracle is just the opposite, recalling the militant might of Maccabees, how our forebearers withstood the attacks and allure of the Hellenized world, standing firm in their belief and defeating the enemy from without and within. The light of our people is fueled by different narratives. The story, the secret, of Jewish survival differs from Jew to Jew and place to place. And yet, no matter who we are and where we are, we need to remember that we all light the same candles, we recite the same blessings, and we remember the miracle of the oil that lasted well beyond what anyone thought possible. As in days of old, so too in our own. This Hanukkah I pray for light in these dark times, that the shared light of our people shines brightly, and the miracle of our people carries forward into the generations to come.

Magid, Shaul. Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2021.