Among the many hats I wear, I am a board member of the Institute for the Publications of the Writings of Rabbi Kahane. Thus I have permission to publicize his writings, which are as stirring and relevant today, as when he wrote them. While Rabbi Kahane was most famous for his strident political activism in the United States and Israel, he was a profound Torah Scholar and one of the outstanding visionaries of our times. Here is an essay which he wrote nearly 50 years ago, but which cries out even more loudly today to the Jews of the Diaspora, when the Coronavirus still haunts mankind and riots undermine the foundations of America:
WE LIVE IN MOMENTOUS TIMES, at an historic point that reaches out to us and offers us greatness. We no longer stand on the threshold of the Messianic era; we have taken our first steps INTO it. Those who disagree are not skeptics — they are blind; they are not scoffers, but foolishly ignorant people.
The end of the great era of man’s wandering and stumbling through life in search of meaning and truth is drawing to a close, and the drama of Jewish history, with its crescendos of persecution and heroism, its drama and pathos, its kaleidoscopic wandering and journeys, is coming to an end. How can one not see that which confronts his very senses, which seizes him and demands to be heard and understood?
The massive Holocaust that thundered down upon the Jewish people and which, within the briefest of moments, undid the work and creation of centuries — carrying away the best and the finest of our people — is hardly an accident of history.
The inexplicable return of a people from 2,000 years and a hundred nations of wandering and bitter persecution, the revival of a language dead far longer than others where revival has been attempted and failed, so that today children play in it and physicists create upon it, is not really inexplicable.
The majestic and soaring rise of Jewish resistance and force of arms; the explosion of the Jewish national liberation movement in the form of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, Lechi (Sternists) and the Haganah; the shattering of the myth of the Jew as one whose blood is cheap and whose life is the gentile’s for the taking; the creation, from the ash heap of history, of the Third Jewish Commonwealth, the State of Israel, is surely not a natural occurrence.
The astounding and massive ingathering of the exiles from North, South, East and West; the return of the Children of Israel from the far reaches of Yemen and the laboratories of London; the Second Exodus of the people of Israel from the Land of Muscovy — all part of the Redemption that is ordained and in full force today.
The hysterical and historical, wildly wonderful and dreamy victory of six days in June; the flight of the enemies of the Jew before the legions of the Hebrew people; the affirmation of the Biblical trumpet: “And you shall pursue your enemies, and they shall fall before your sword. And five of you shall pursue one hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight, and your enemies shall fall before your sword . . . ” (Leviticus 26:7-8); the return to ancient Eretz Yisrael, the paratroopers who clutched with their fingernails, deeply, into the Wall and the others who ran past the evil seventh barrier-step into the Cave of Machpela and those who prostrated themselves upon the grave of Rachel, our mother; the echo of the One who pledged: “Every place upon which the sole of your foot will tread I will give to you . . . ” (Joshua 1:3).
It is an historic moment and we live within it. The Exile is coming to an end for all Jews — those who wish it and those who do not. The sands of time for the Diaspora are running out — in good ways and in terrible ones. The Jewish people is being returned home by its Maker — of that there is no longer a doubt. There is no longer a choice. The lands of wealth and prosperity will be afflicted with hatred of Jews and a tidal wave of persecution — there is no choice. We are going home to Eretz Yisrael, or we will disappear in the Exile. That is clear. The Holy One, Blessed Be He, is bringing us back to the Land of Israel, and those who wish to remain behind will be unable to do so — as Jews.
What a time in which to live! What an opportunity to choose greatness! Will we understand? Will Jews in the United States, be capable of perceiving and reaching that greatness?
Consider carefully; look about with eyes that are open. America, bitter, frustrated, filled with anger and self-doubt, ripped by violence and seething rivalries, moves swifter and swifter to an explosion of hatred that will put an end to the safety, security, freedom and perhaps the very life of the Jew. On the other hand, there stands the miracle of Eretz Yisrael — the Land of Israel.
It is a large land, this Eretz Yisrael. It stands from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, from Hermon through to Sinai. It stands, capable of absorbing millions, many, many millions of its sons and daughters who have yet to come. It is the land where one cannot move without colliding with the Jewish past. This is the land where Abraham walked and Isaac and Jacob traveled; this is the land where David and Saul fought the enemy and Deborah and Samson smote the foe; this is the land where the Prophets raised their eyes unto the heavens and spoke to the people; this is where the Maccabees preserved Judaism with the sword and where the Sanhedrin and Ben-Zakkai continued it with the book; here died Bar-Kochba, and here is where his children will return. Here is Eretz Yisrael — here is home.
What a glorious challenge we have been given! The gauntlet has been thrown down before us and we are presented with a demand that we climb the heights of greatness!
Aliyah — going up to the land, going home to Eretz Yisrael — this is the task at hand. Let us leave behind the dust of exile, the terrible fate that awaits us, our enemies of the Diaspora, who thirst for our blood and plan yet another Auschwitz. Let us begin to make our plans to leave the graveyards of Exile and live in our own land — free, a majority, alive. Let us guarantee the preservation of our children and children’s children. Let us watch them grow tall and tanned, strong and proud, secure and sovereign.
We need this land and it needs us. Millions of new Jews pouring into Israel will fill up its empty spaces, guarantee the retention of all the liberated lands of Judea, Samaria, Golan, Gaza and Sinai; assure a vast Jewish majority despite the addition of a million new non-Jews; add Western democratic and technical skills to the land. Eretz Yisrael will never again be lost to us.
Aliyah: Above all, it will assure that the liquidation of the exile — WHICH IS UNDERWAY REGARDLESS OF OUR WISHES — will be completed with joy rather than with tragedy, with liberation rather than with Holocaust, with return rather than with disappearance. What a moment in history! How wonderful it would be if we were to understand it, clutch at it and become part of it.
Written, May 5, 1972, by Rabbi Meir Kahane
From “Beyond Words” the 7 Volume Collection of his articles, edited by David Fein.
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