"Ask the Rabbi" by R. Mermelstein
QUESTION: Dear Rabbi Mermelstein:
It seems you're silent on all matters regarding Kahane and those who follow his teachings.
Am I missing something?
Bob Martin
15 July 2004
ANSWER: Dear Mr. Martin,
You've only missed a 2,000-word essay I once wrote about Rabbi
Kahane. That file is gone and may never be recovered. In a nutshell, I
read Rabbi Kahane's book, "Never Again", while still a soldier in the
US Army. That would have been about 1973-1974. That book held me
fixated.
In 1976, while a young rabbinical student in Jerusalem,
Israel, I was told that Rabbi Kahane lived only two apartment buildings
away from where I was studying in the Mattersdorf section of the city.
Without an appointment I knocked on his door early one evening during
the weeklong Jewish festival of Succos. He graciously invited me in,
and I bombarded him with questions about his philosophy. We spent
nearly two hours discussing Jewish survival at the dining table in his
small apartment. I emerged enlightened and energized.
Not too long
afterward Rabbi Kahane entered Israeli politics. The rest is a matter
of record. He became an outcast member of the Israeli parliament and
the Israeli government banned the party he founded, Kach. It was a sad
day for me when an Arab assassinated him in a Manhattan, New York,
hotel where he was speaking to a large gathering.
Rabbi Kahane's
successor, Irv Rubin, and I traded journalistic barbs for a couple of
years. His bragging about the number of times he had been arrested
didn't sit well with me. The student is never the equal of the teacher.
In time Irv and I became close friends. We both live in Southern
California. We even graduated from the same high school. We broke bread
together in local kosher restaurants. We even worked together several
years ago on a Holocaust Remembrance Day event that was to memorialize
those who fought the Nazis rather than to mourn the dead, as is the
annual custom. The circumstances of his arrest and death in prison came
as a shock to me.
I've never been silent on the topic of Rabbi Kahane.
He was a religious man, unlike his successor, with insights into
matters of Jewish survival that knew no peers.
Sincerely,
R. Mermelstein
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