THE COMPLEX PAST OF MEIR KAHANE [New York Times, 24 Jan. 1975]

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100670006-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 31, 2004
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: January 24, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

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ast Of It
' I:V anCIIAI'L f RAUPMAN '1 "I ~u>n se I vanted _:
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1'he beginnings were: in a
The story of Mcir Kahane -those who kne,,v me by either second floor apartment oil Sec
anoves from Talmudic head- of.the names to know I had and Street. in the Flatbush sac-
einies in Brooklyn to a con- written it." tion of Brooklyn, where Martin,
gr?egation that rebuffed him, The' interview took place as he was called then, grow irk,,
to an existence under an as- it, ra viewing reoni of a televl the first-born of Rabbi and Mrs.
sion. studio where the ralibi Charles Kahane.
.-sunned name ? unknown' to The Kahanes are a tightknit
most of this friends and then had just finished taping a pro- family and the parents speak
to the re-emergence of Rabbi gram. in front of the cameras with great pride of ? Meir and
Kahane- this time as the he spoke with authority of his his brother Nahman, who is the
=founder of a ;iiil.itant Jewish group's recent harassment of ranking civil servant in Israel's
Ivlinistry of Pcligious Affalrs. '
.,group embroiling itself in in. .15oviet personnel here. In the In the study Zvlrere Charles
tternational controversy. interview abou'.. ills earlier life,, Kahane once painstakingly.
` . As founder of the Jewish his tong was less assured, translated tie five books of
'Defense League he has with The rabbi said he had first Moses into English, the elderly
than using his Ataglic.. couple talked recently of the
n ?a mimeo-
little more promise they felt for Mcir at.
graph .machine drawn the 1>seirdonyrn, in 1962, more or most from the time he was
recognition--and condomna- less as a lark. Sometimes he born on Aug. 1, 1932.
: tion--of the United States, would write articles for neigh- An Idealistic F]gliter'
the Soviet Union, Israel and borhoocl newspapers as Meir, "Nahman is a kind of my-,-
the. and at other-times as
the, major Jewish peg to tza- and, tic,? said the .father. 'Ile coil-
:1 tions in the United Stai.cs..... Michael King. But it was not , iders his'hrother as oe of the
P,n until three years ago until 1965, he said, that Michael' outstanding people of our time,
Icing became a way of life, an idealistic fighter for a great
j there vas no spotlijht of at From the details of his dual cause. Maybe destiny sent him
tentioil. To those who knew existence. it appears that under to bring redemption to his tor?
Into then only as a leir Ka- both names the than was mo- tured people throughout the'
bane he was simply the Old- tivated by personal ambition world. May God help him he
est of two sons of a hi Illy and a strong social conscious- should achieve that goal.
t Hess. - "Meir was always a sensitive'
'i'egarded Talnnxlic scholar. Ill tl]e pursuits he met fens and sentimental boy. At the
He was' a brilliant student, tration. He unsuccessfully tried age of 5 he was operated on
an ordained rabbi with grad- to make his Conservative con- for a mastoid and he told the
state degrees in law and in- ?,re ration more Orthodox. Ile nurse he wanted to read The:
ternational affairs, failed the state bar examina- New York Times. ,
Lion and would not take it "Ile was always interested
And for those woo, aat the again, Ile had 'ambitions of In books that' had to cio With
same time, knew him only as emigrating to Israel and rising social life. When he was 10
Michael King, he was the to high influence, but the a;mbi- years old a rabbi came into the
res]clcnt of -,in }'salt Sicle tions came to nothing. apartment and saw him read-
Under the name of King he, lag from the encyclopedia
"apartment who spent time in by his own account, "postured" about Karl Marx."
Washington as the partner as a man to be taken seriously As to the shaping of his
-in. a small company that. in \T?Iasli!ngton political circles
$oright Government contracts and in the intelligence bureauc-
for political research. Under racy. Again, by his own ac-
that name he wrote ,, rs count, this came to nothing.
1gin'
But then in 1968 he founded
and books and once organ- the Jewish Defense League.
"ized a student ~roverneat to, Supported by a legion of
s itjiport the war in Vietdaiir. adolescent follo=; Hers, and with
Only once were the two the force of his own per-
names linked on the tblic sonality, he projected himself
p , as a defender of his people.
res.ord. That" was in 1967.'' In speeches before synagogue
svhen a book called groups, he elicited a basic rc-
Jewish Stake in -Vietnam"' sponse in many American Jews
who had never felt' themselves
was published by the re,- assimilated and who looked
search group. Two of the a>on the traditional Jewish
three authors listed on the' organizations as distant.
jacket were Michael King , In Context of History
and Meir Kahane. Ili-, appropriation of the
The other day, during an ' .phras, "Never Again," -hit
interview in which a New home, even to Jews who de-
York Times reporter told the cried Ns tactics, conjuring up
a cotn~r~cate i an ossib] in-
Kahanc remembered that in
1952, after swastikas had been
smeared on a number of syna-
gogues, he, as head of the
Rabbinical Board of Flatbush,
had marry greetings with local
officials. lie recalls returning'
from one of these dejected and
dispirited.
4'Unwittingly I said it would
be a good idea if Jews would
organize an underground," he
said. "Meir took 'it seriously.
"That's the only thing we can
do."' lie said,
"My house was always a
house of Zionist activities. The
late [Vladiroir'] Jahotinsky the
militant Zionist revisionist, was
in my house. We had a parlor
meeting for him, Meir was
then.a young bdy. But he was
very attentive.
rabbi that facts of his past cxpress!Yle feeIinS Of h!stor!ca Effect on Holocaust
had cot~te to light, Rabbi Ka- continuity in the face of bar-' In 1947, the father saint, his
bane was asked why both barisr-a anI oppression. ton and some- of his friends
names were used on the And as Heir Kahane he sue- threw tomatoes at Ernest
boot:. - ? ? seeded, whare earlier as Mi- Bevin; the British minister, then
"I really don't l no.v,:' he chael Kin; he had failed. He here on a visit. "fie had been
had influence, power and a impressed by the holocaust and
ansivered w;th a sad, snAApi b&1r4ifirRelease 200410 W2&IiAMAIRl B8 31'R000100670006-6
Into concentration camps on
Cyprus during the British man-.
date over Palestine." .
After. studying at yeshivas,
young Kahane attended Brook-
lyn College at night, graduating
in three and a half years. He
went to the Mirror Yeshiva.,
where he was' ordained and
began calling himself Moir. He
married in 1955. For two years
he served as the rabbi for a
congregation in Howard Beach,
Queens, but he proved- too
Orthodox for the Conservative,
middle-class congregation and
left.
At the same time he obtained
his law degree from New York
Law School, but failed the bar
exam. Then lie enrolled at Now
York University, and received
his Toaster's degree in inter-'
ti
l l
na
ona
aw. .
It was in 1963, his mother
said, that Meir went to Israel,
leaving his wife and four chit-.
dreta for a few months. A rela-
tive who does not want to be'
'identified said that at -the time
of Iris departure, Mr. Kahane
predicted he would soon be-
comc a. member of the Israeli
Cabinet.
1-I!s mother said that lie hadi
been asked to head the inter
'.national affairs department at,
Bar-11,111 University, but that
this opportunity fell through.
From Israel he wrote to his
parents, she said, that he had
"met with the chief rabbis of
Jerusaleni and that lie was the
first rabbi---an American and so
young---to be admitted among
them."
Mr. Kahane served for three:
months as a rabbi on a kibbutzf
and then returned home. "He
was very upset," said his
naot.her, "at all the fighting
among Jewish factions in
Israel."
Writing foi?.Newspaper
By this time he began writ-
ing for The Jewish Press, ? a
I weekly with a circulation of
130,000, using the name Mi-
chael'King for the first time as
a byline on some articles.
As a young man in Flatbusli,
Moir Kahane had a close friend
named Joseph Churba. The two
went to the same schools and
had attended a camp in the
Catskills run by Betar, the re-
visionist Zionist organization.
They were to form a profes-
sional association.
Mr. Churba, who also is a
rabbi, is today a professor of
Middle Pastern studies at the
United States Air University at
Maxwell Air Force Base, in
(Montgomery, Ala. -
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