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

Political activists --- Rabbis --- Kahane, Meir. --- 1982 Lebanon War. --- Abraham Isaac Kook. --- Abraham Joshua Heschel. --- Act of Violence. --- Activism. --- Aliyah. --- Alt-right. --- American Jews. --- American Thinker. --- Anti-Zionism. --- Anti-communism. --- Anti-imperialism. --- Anti-racism. --- Antisemitism. --- Apocalypticism. --- Arab–Israeli conflict. --- Avi Weiss. --- Avodah Zarah. --- Avraham Stern. --- Bar and Bat Mitzvah. --- Black nationalism. --- Black supremacy. --- Blue law. --- Conversion to Judaism. --- Criticism of capitalism. --- Demonization. --- Diaspora Jew (stereotype). --- Dick Gregory. --- Elijah. --- Ezekiel. --- Frantz Fanon. --- Freedom Riders. --- Gentile. --- God. --- Golden calf. --- Good and evil. --- Gush Emunim. --- Haredi Judaism. --- Heresy. --- Hilltop Youth. --- Houston Stewart Chamberlain. --- Idolatry. --- Irgun. --- Jewish Defense League. --- Jewish assimilation. --- Jewish diaspora. --- Jewish question. --- Jewish refugees. --- Jewish religious terrorism. --- Jews. --- Joachim Prinz. --- Joseph Churba. --- Judaism. --- Kabbalah. --- Kahanism. --- Kulturkampf. --- Lehi (group). --- Lenny Bruce. --- Liberal elite. --- Liberalism. --- Lucy Dawidowicz. --- Malcolm X. --- Manichaeism. --- Maurice Eisendrath. --- Meir Kahane. --- Mitzvah. --- Names of God in Judaism. --- Neturei Karta. --- Occupy movement. --- Oppression. --- Orthodox Judaism. --- Post-Zionism. --- Purim. --- Rabbinic Judaism. --- Racism. --- Radical chic. --- Radicalism (historical). --- Reform Judaism. --- Religion. --- Religious Zionism. --- Revisionist Zionism. --- Romanticism. --- Scientific racism. --- Secularism. --- Shlomo Ben-Yosef. --- Soviet Jewry Movement. --- Stereotypes of Jews. --- Superiority (short story). --- The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. --- The New York Intellectuals. --- The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. --- The Wretched of the Earth. --- Uncle Tom. --- Yeshiva. --- Yitzchak Ginsburgh. --- Yitzhak Shamir. --- Zealots (Judea). --- Zionism. --- Zionist Organization of America. --- Zvi Yehuda Kook.