Rabbi Meir Kahane And Me

By Cheri F Rosen

I first met Rabbi Meir Kahane the summer before my senior year in high school. He was speaking to the mostly Zionist staff at Camp Cejwin in Port Jervis, New York where I was spending my summer as a waitress. As an aspiring hippie/pacifist, my friends and I were appalled that this “militant” (“Every Jew a 22”) rabbi was being given a platform. We actually knew very little about the newly formed Jewish Defense League (JDL) and its founder and director, Rabbi Kahane, but just as is currently the case in ultra-liberal pockets of youth all over the country, ignorance abounds among the students of America. My friends and I were excited to have a cause of protest and so we stayed up all night prior to his appearance making posters and black armbands signaling our opposition. Rabbi Kahane courteously questioned us as to our “cause.” Luckily, I was not the chosen spokesperson for the group, as I’m sure that I had no answer. Indeed, it pains me to remember that this brilliant and self-sacrificing rabbi was reduced to facing down a bunch of ignorant and insolent children.

Fast forward two years. Rabbi Kahane came to speak on the campus of Hebrew University where I was a student for my second consecutive year post high school. My political leanings were confused to say the least. My closest friends other than my former roommates were three gentle Israeli soldiers I met while spending time volunteering on a kibbutz. Yet I was simultaneously living in East Jerusalem with three “Palestinians” whom I had befriended in my university program. Suffice it to say, I was still not welcoming of the controversial rabbi. This time I was increasingly vocal and slightly more knowledgeable in my protest.

Two more years passed, and I was no longer quite as ignorant or naïve when I met Rabbi Kahane for the third time at the University of Maryland. The Yom Kippur War had ensued and all three of my beloved chayalimhad perished in the Sinai. Also, I had left Israel shortly after the brother of two of my “Palestinian” roommates was arrested for his participation in an assassination plot against Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and David Ben Gurion. I was now eager to hear what Rabbi Kahane had to say about the Committee Against Israeli Retreat (CAIR), which he had formed to ensure that “not one inch” of the Sinai where my friends were killed be returned to Egypt.

Dr. William Perl, then the acting director of the JDL, arranged a meeting at his College Park home and I had the opportunity to remind Rabbi Kahane of our two previous encounters. We discussed at some length my metamorphosis from liberal leftist to staunch Zionist as well as my plans for the future. I was just three months short of graduation and was planning to make aliyah and attend medical school in Israel.

My plans were no match for the charismatic persuasiveness of Rabbi Kahane and in less than two hours, the rabbi had convinced me to totally alter my future. I agreed to move to New York and work for him as the founding director of the Shuva Aliyah Movement. Then, when the first group of olim were ready to make the move, I would be as well.

That June, I sublet an apartment in the West Village, where Rabbi Kahane koshered my kitchen so that he could have a place to have a Sabbath meal within walking distance. He was then imprisoned in a halfway house in Manhattan while awaiting the court’s decision to grant his request for kosher food in Allenwood Penitentiary. I was not at all observant at the time and there was no way in the world that the strictly Orthodox Rabbi Kahane would even drink a glass of water in my home, but I was too ignorant to know that. Thus began Rabbi Kahane’s surreptitious efforts to elevate me to a ba’alat teshuvah.

Every week that summer, he convinced me to spend Shabbat with a family of “really big donors” in order to raise money for the new and fledgling aliyah organization, Shuva. I dutifully trekked week after week to consistently modest New York and New Jersey homes without ever realizing that those “big donors” were in fact just simple supporters with beautiful and spiritual Shabbatot that he knew would greatly influence and guide me toward a life of Torah true Judaism. As usual, he wasn’t wrong. I spent those summer months learning all I could about kashruth, Shabbat, and Orthodox Judaism.

Rabbi Kahane spent several Shabbatot that summer (even though he was incarcerated most days in the halfway house) visiting the JDL camp in the Catskills, and I was extremely fortunate to be able to chauffeur him back and forth. It was during those car rides that I became privileged to begin to comprehend the amazing work and numerous accomplishments of the rabbi that I had aligned myself with. From Soviet Jewry, to dissent between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, growing antisemitism, and intermarriage, and of course the threat of emboldened “Palestinian” terrorists, Rabbi Kahane imbued a constant sense of urgency.

Rabbi Kahane won the kosher food case in the fall, which had two major results. All Jewish prisoners in the American penal system would be forever entitled to kosher food, and the few remaining months of Rabbi Kahane’s incarceration would be served in Allenwood State Penitentiary. Finally, that spring Rabbi Kahane returned to Israel where the following years allowed him to become a political force, even serving for a while in the Knesset. He devoted his efforts and leadership to create change within while handing the reigns to others to continue his work in the U.S. JDL and its American subsidiaries staggered on for a few years, but with the physical absence of its visionary leader it lost much of its prowess and power.

After that summer of Shuva, I saw Rabbi Kahane very infrequently through the subsequent years. However, his vast knowledge, incredible wisdom, and astute prescience became imprinted on my soul as his influence on my life continues to reverberate daily.

It is hard to believe that 35 years have passed since he was assassinated, yet each day, as World Jewry continually suffers from the onslaught of evil Arabs in a sympathetic and increasingly antisemitic world more and more realize that once in a past generation we walked alongside a true navi.

May his neshamah have an aliyah. 

Cheri F. Rosen, of Lang Realty, has been a REALTOR® in South Florida since moving to Boca Raton over a decade ago. You can learn more about real estate in South Florida by calling Cheri at 561-221-2233 or visiting Cheri’s website: southfloridacondosandhouses.com or just Google the words Orthodox Boca. Cheri’s website is the top search result. Submit your personal questions and concerns to Cheri, and they will be answered personally, or anonymously in future columns.