All I feel is a deep emptiness in the
pit of my stomach. I have no desire to eat, or talk to anybody.
Only by writing can I channel the pain I feel into something positive.
Rabbi Meir Kahane was more than a friend. He was a living legend;
the embodiment of what real Jewish pride is supposed to be; and an inspiration
to all who knew him that there is always hope for our people.
He was fighting for his people and sitting
in jails long before I met him some fifteen years ago. Even then
he was shuttling back and forth between Israel and America, reaching out
to his people. Were it not for these trips, I might not have become
the observant Jew I am today, living in Israel. Yes, Rabbi Kahane
had a profound affect upon me, enabling me to shape my own life as a Jew
who has elected to come home.
I know that there are countless Jews who have been
rescued from Jewish amnesia by this Tzadik. But, as he often taught,
to save just one Jewish life, is as if you have saved the entire world.
Who can count the number of entire worlds Rabbi Kahane has saved?
How can it be that in such a brief moment
he was snatched from us forever? We who knew him and loved him are
the heirs to his mission. We dare not let his murderer succeed in
killing the idea for which he gave his very life, the idea that Torah is
our guide and light. When it conflicts with obstacles in our daily
life, we must overcome those obstacles and uphold the Torah, no matter
what the price.
There are those who labeled him a racist,
simply because he spoke the Jewish truth. Every Jewish leader in
Israel secretly agreed with all that he said, but none had the courage
to speak what they believed. Rabbi Kahane faced the problems head
on and came up with many brilliant ideas to solve them. The powers
that be chose, and still choose not to recognize the war against the Jewish
State and the Jewish people by "our" Arabs, and today we are reaping the
reward of that cowardice as we learn to live with Arab terror.
And still they condemn the man, the only man, whose ideas would have ended
the "intifada" long before it began.
Where do we go from here? Only you can
decide what you will do. We won't find another Meir Kahane.
But he still lives and breathes deep inside each and every one of us whom
he has touched. Let us, each one of us, carry on the ideals for which he
gave his very life. And he gave his life every day for those ideals.
If each one of us would devote ourselves with one tenth of the energy he
gave, we can conquer the world. It is now up to us.
After Rabbi Kahane was murdered, in 1990, his widow, Libby Kahane, called upon Gary Cooperberg to continue the Rabbi's column in the Jewish Press. From May of 1991 until February of 1994 the column appeared under the title "In the Traditions of Rabbi Meir Kahane, z"tl, H"yd" by Gershon ben Shabtai, (Gary Cooperberg's Hebrew name). In the byline was a photo of the Rabbi.
From this page you can download zip files of articles which were written for that column in their original and unabridged form.
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