Shabbos Parshas Vayeira, 18 Cheshvan 5773 marks the yahrzeit of Rabbi Meir Kahane HY”D, the former MK, founder of the Jewish Defense League, Kach Party and visionary.
In November 1990, following a speech to an audience of mostly Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn, as a crowd of well-wishers gathered around Kahane in the second-floor lecture hall in midtown Manhattan’s Marriott East Side Hotel, Kahane was assassinated. He was shot to death by El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-born American citizen who was initially charged and acquitted of the murder. Nosair was later convicted of the murder in United States district court incident to the trial for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Prosecutors were able to retry Nosair for the murder because the federal indictment includes the killing as part of the alleged terrorist conspiracy. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and later made a confession to federal agents.
Many mispallalim visited his Har Menuchos kever on Thursday, 16 Cheshvan, while others will go on erev and motzei shabbos. There was a ceremony in Har Menuchos on Thursday at 16:00 and a program followed at 18:00 in the Heichal David Hall on Ohilov Street in Yerushalayim later in the day.
Supporters of the rav remind the political community that in his day, the rav warned “you can either have Kahane or Arafat” and today, since they ousted Kach from Knesset “we got Arafat and his cronies”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
May he be a gutteh betteh for Klal Yisrael & Eretz Yisrael. What a terrible loss….I remember it so well. 🙁 Wasn’t his son Binyomin also assassinated?
Yup
The issues that R’ Kahane identified as problematic (such as the demographic time bomb)- which everyone else denied were even problems – are now universally accepted as problems. Today, there is still a dispute as to whether the solutions he offered to these problems were the right ones. in a few more years, that too, will become universally accepted.
the main problem back then is the same problem now. mostly lunatics, border-line criminals and angry people flock to Kahane and his movement. if kahane’s ideas were disguised in a good-looking package that can be delivered to the mainstream, the entire country would unify behind it.
It’s a pity that such a talmid chochom and baal chesed is remembered by so many as a political radical. His political work was important, but it was second to his learning and his generosity.