The life and politics of an American Jewish activist who preached radical and violent means to Jewish survival

Meir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968, declaring that Jews must protect themselves by any means necessary. He immigrated to Israel in 1971, where he founded KACH, an ultranationalist and racist political party. He would die by assassination in 1990. Shaul Magid provides an in-depth look at this controversial figure, showing how the postwar American experience shaped his life and political thought.

Magid sheds new light on Kahane’s radical political views, his critique of liberalism, and his use of the “grammar of race” as a tool to promote Jewish pride. He discusses Kahane’s theory of violence as a mechanism to assure Jewish safety, and traces how his Zionism evolved from a fervent support of Israel to a belief that the Zionist project had failed. Magid examines how tradition and classical Jewish texts profoundly influenced Kahane’s thought later in life, and argues that Kahane’s enduring legacy lies not in his Israeli career but in the challenge he posed to the liberalism and assimilatory project of the postwar American Jewish establishment.

This incisive book shows how Kahane was a quintessentially American figure, one who adopted the radicalism of the militant Left as a tenet of Jewish survival.

"Enlightening and accessible . . . a nuanced and eye-opening portrait of an overlooked figure in Jewish political history." - Publishers Weekly

"Meir Kahane offers a detailed account of Kahane’s life and activities in the United States and Israel. It is an intellectual history that is a major contribution to our understanding of Kahane’s thought and its cultural context. Yet the book is much more than a biography. It is an intervention in the historiography of the Jewish political tradition and its contemporary relevance. Magid compellingly shows that Kahane is part and parcel of the contemporary Jewish discourse of race, power, and politics—covertly in the United States and more and more overtly in Israel." - Journal of Religious Ethics