Why be Jewish?

Why be Jewish?
Author: Meir Kahane
Publisher: Scarborough House
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1977
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

They Must Go

They Must Go
Author: Meir Kahane
Publisher:
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2019-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781478388913

"Every day," writes Rabbi Meir Kahane, "the Arabs of Israel move closer to becoming a majority. Are we [Israel] committed to national suicide? Should we allow demography, geography, and democracy to push Israel closer to the abyss? According to Rabbi Kahane, Israel can only be sustained by a permanent Jewish majority and a small, insignificant, and placid Arab minority. But the Arab population continues to grown quantitatively and qualitatively. They feel no ties for a state that breathes Jewishness. They mockingly accept moneys from the National Insurance Institute for medical services, tuition, and social welfre; yet they pay little or no tax. Even worse, they openly vow to destroy the Jewish state - not with bullets or bombs, but with the democratic vote. Is there a solution? Rabbi Kahane insists, "Yes." In this explosive manifesto Rabbi Kahane sets forth the only plan to save Israel. Israeli Arabs would be given the options of accepting noncitizenship, leaving willingly with compensation, or being forcibly expelled without compensation. Controversial? Yes. Could the Arabs be convinced to leave? "We will not come to the Arabs to request, argue, or convince," says Kahane. "For Jews and Arabs in Israel there is only one answer - separation. Jews in their land, Arabs in theirs. Separation. Only separation." They Must Go was written in 1980 while Rabbi Meir Kahane was jailed in Ramle Prison by the Israeli government under an unprecedented administrative detention order that imprisoned him without a trial, without his being informed of any specific charge, and without opportunity to know or to question any alleged evidence or witness. His crime: his philosophy concerning the danger that exists to the state of Israel by the very presence of its large and growing Arab population. Rabbi Kahane's ideas were suppressed, twisted, defamed, and subjected to emotional and hysterical diatribes by people who were too frightened to consider them intelligently or to debate them intellectually. Is there a time bomb ticking away relentlessly in the Holy Land? Can Arabs and Jews ultimately coexist in a Jewish-Zionist state? Rabbi Kahane's only answer: "They Must Go."

Stations West

Stations West
Author: Allison Amend
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2010-03-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0807137324

Follows four generations of Haurowitzes, from 1859 when the first Jewish settler, Boggy, arrives in Oklahoma's forgotten territory. Intertwined with a family of Swedish immigrants, they struggle against betrayals, nature, and burgeoning statehood, to find their families utterly transformed.

Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews

Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews
Author: Meir Kahane
Publisher:
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2021-04-07
Genre:
ISBN: 9781715882020

Rabbi Meir Kahane is a member of the Israeli Knesset. According to public opinion polls, the movement he heads is gaining enormous power among Israelis, and particularly among the young. Kahane has long been a thorn in the buttocks of the wealthy and entrenched Jewish leadership. His founding of the Jewish Defense League, his demands for Jewish defense of poor and elderly Jews in the inner cities, his taking to the streets in the late '60s and his use of violence to draw international attention to the Soviet Jewish problem, have all gained him the hostility of so-called Jewish leaders. In Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews, Meir Kahane touches the most painful nerves and psyches of those Jewish liberals who would prefer to believe that Judaism and Zionism arc compatible with liberal concepts. He challenges us all with such agonizing questions as: If a Jewish and Zionist state was created in Israel to guarantee a homeland for Jews with a guaranteed permanent Jewish majority and Jewish sovereignty, will Arabs be allowed to peacefully and democratically become a majority and turn Israel into an Arab nation? - If the answer is "No," isn't that a contradiction of the western democratic thesis: "one person, one vote"'? - Is Zionism, which calls for a Jewish majority, not in total conflict with Western democracy, which insists on majority rule, no matter who constitutes the majority? - Can any Jewish leader or even an average Jew offer a young Jew any logical reason not to marry a non-Jew? Or even the slightest logical reason to insist on being a Jew rather than a "human being"? - Is Israel a Jewish state or is it a Hebrew-speaking gentilized one whose secular youth haven't the slightest idea of what Jewishness is and who dream of living in the fleshpots of the West? - How many Arabs will sit in the Knesset in ten years? In twenty years? Will they become a majority and vote Israel out of existence? - Does that matter? -

The Other in Jewish Thought and History

The Other in Jewish Thought and History
Author: Laurence J. Silberstein
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 483
Release: 1994-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814779891

Cultural boundaries and group identity are often forged in relation to the Other. In every society, conceptions of otherness, which often reflect a group's fears and vulnerabilities, result in deep-rooted traditions of inclusion and exclusion that permeate the culture's literature, religion, and politics. This volume explores the ways in which Jews have traditionally defined other groups and, in turn, themselves. The contributors, a distinguished international group of scholars, explore the discursive processss through which Jewish identity and culture have been constructed, disseminated, and perpetuated. Among the topics addressed are: Others in the biblical world; the construction of gender in Roman-period Judaism; the Other as woman in the Greco-Roman world; the gentile as Other in rabbinic law; the feminine as Other in kabbalah; the reproduction of the Other in the Passover Haggadah; the Palestinian Arab as Other in Israeli politics and literature; the Other in Levinas and Derrida; Blacks as Other in American Jewish literature; the Jewish body image as symbol of Otherness; and women as Other in Israeli cinema. Contributors to this interdisciplinary volume are: Jonathan Boyarin (New School for Social Research), Robert L. Cohn (Lafayette College), Gerald Cromer (Bar-Ilan University), Trude Dothan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Elizabeth Fifer (Lehigh University), Steven D. Fraade (Yale University), Sander L. Gilman (Cornell University), Hannan Hever (Tel Aviv University), Ross S. Kraemer (University of Pennsylvania), Orly Lubin (Tel Aviv University), Peter Machinist (Harvard University), Jacob Meskin (Williams College), Adi Ophir (Tel Aviv University), Ilan Peleg (Lafayette College), Miriam Peskowitz (University of Florida), Laurence J. Silberstein (Lehigh University), Naomi Sokoloff (University of Washington), and Elliot R. Wolfson (New York University).

Doubting the Devout

Doubting the Devout
Author: Nora L Rubel
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2009-11-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231141866

Before 1985, depictions of ultra-Orthodox Jews in popular American culture were rare, and if they did appear, in films such as Fiddler on the Roof or within the novels of Chaim Potok, they evoked a nostalgic vision of Old World tradition. Yet the ordination of women into positions of religious leadership and other controversial issues have sparked an increasingly visible and voluble culture war between America's ultra-Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, one that has found a particularly creative voice in literature, media, and film. Unpacking the work of Allegra Goodman, Tova Mirvis, Pearl Abraham, Erich Segal, Anne Roiphe, and others, as well as television shows and films such as A Price Above Rubies, Nora L. Rubel investigates the choices non-haredi Jews have made as they represent the character and characters of ultra-Orthodox Jews. In these artistic and aesthetic acts, Rubel recasts the war over gender and family and the anxieties over acculturation, Americanization, and continuity. More than just a study of Jewishness and Jewish self-consciousness, Doubting the Devout will speak to any reader who has struggled to balance religion, family, and culture.

We Remember with Reverence and Love

We Remember with Reverence and Love
Author: Hasia R. Diner
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2010-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0814721222

It has become an accepted truth: after World War II, American Jews chose to be silent about the mass murder of millions of their European brothers and sisters at the hands of the Nazis. In a compelling work sure to draw fire from academics and pundits alike, Hasia R. Diner shows this assumption of silence to be categorically false.

Time To Go Home

Time To Go Home
Author: Rabbi Meir Kahane
Publisher:
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-06-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9781684119196

Rabbi Meir Kahane wrote an entire book, Time to Go Home, published in 1972, to persuade American Jews to make their homes in Israel. The book shows the reality of Jew hatred in America; the likelihood that the current social, economic, political and psychological crisis in America would set off another Holocaust; and the rise of hate groups and their motivations. Rabbi Kahane saw the danger signs in 1971: "Governments speak of huge layoffs and breadwinners are confronted with the unique prospect of unemployment.... The cities stand under massive, cross-country threat of bankruptcy.... And the sudden economic crisis is heightened by the psychological fact that for 25 years we have lived a relatively good life and have come to look upon [it] as that which is our due. ... And so, in this year of 1971, as unemployment and fear reach the highest peaks since 1938 and when ... many millions of white, blue-collar workers face bleak and painful economic futures, the Jew must once again consider what may lie before him. People who are frightened of their economic future are desperate people and desperate people are dangerous... and all their antagonism against minorities and racial groups; all their insecurities and their pent-up rage over a world they dislike and cannot understand; all these are thrown into the witches' brew from which comes forth an explosion. That explosion means the destruction of democratic civilization and the substitution of a brutal, tyrannical totalitarianism. America ... is in great danger and the Jew in the greatest of perils." Reviewer Reuben Gross wrote: "Anticipating the outcry his book is bound to stir, Rabbi Kahane points out that Jabotinsky was called a fool for crying out in the 30s 'Jews, get moving. There is no time. A fire is burning, get out.' Considerable patience is not required to read this book. Rabbi Kahane's writing combines first-rate journalistic fluency with a touch of rabbinic rhetoric and well-organized forensic persuasiveness." Time to Go Home concludes with a practical program for American aliya and ends with the words, "Home. It calls us. Let us return."

My Promised Land

My Promised Land
Author: Ari Shavit
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2013-11-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812984641

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “A deeply reported, deeply personal history of Zionism and Israel that does something few books even attempt: It balances the strength and weakness, the idealism and the brutality, the hope and the horror, that has always been at Zionism’s heart.”—Ezra Klein, The New York Times Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Ari Shavit’s riveting work, now updated with new material, draws on historical documents, interviews, and private diaries and letters, as well as his own family’s story, to create a narrative larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and of profound historical dimension. As he examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, Shavit asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can it survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. Shavit’s analysis of Israeli history provides a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.