I’m an American Jewish teen and believe we need to teach self defense
I’m an American Jewish teen and believe we need to teach self defense

I’m an American Jewish teenager and I’m a Kahanist.

I’m growing up in suburbia, so why am I a Kahanist? I have read almost all of Rabbi Kahane’s books, I bring them to school every day. The logic he brings in his books is just stunning. I was born 15 years after he was assassinated. You can bet El Sayid Nossair and the people that assisted him with the Rabbi’s assassination would have never dreamed a 14 year old boy, 29 years after the assassination, would be continuing to believe in Rabbi Kahane’s ideas.

This month is Rabbi Kahane’s 29th yahrzeit. He was murdered on the 18th of Heshvan by El Sayid Nosair. The Rabbi was giving a speech in New York about how Jews should return to Israel. Two years before he was murdered his party was banned from the Israeli Knesset, parliament. His party was the first party ever banned from the Israeli parliament. In my opinion the banning of his party is completely undemocratic. If Israel is a democracy then everyone should be allowed to run for parliament.

At my age Rabbi Kahane joined a youth Zionist movement, Betar. Betar taught him how to shoot, he also attended protests and demonstrations with Betar. One of the Betar protests that the Rabbi attended was in New York on April 17, 1947, protesting the British Royal Navy. Betar also gave him many leadership values that should be replicated today because of the recent attacks on synagogues. The lack of Zionist leadership in America is mostly because great organizations like Betar stopped operating in America.   

In 1968 Rabbi Kahane started the Jewish Defense League. The Jewish Defense League focused on combating anti-Semitism and the alienation of the Jewish youth. Rabbi Kahane realized Jewish youth like myself were not being taught self-defense and Jewish pride. The Jewish Defense League protested and demonstrated for Soviet Jews to be released from Soviet Russia

“We must define our youth; we must tell them who they are. We must answer their questions: what and why is a Jew? What and why am I?” wrote Rabbi Kahane (Our Challenge, 1974).

The young people are scared, they just want to fit in with their gentile neighbors. Many kids nowadays want to go to public school and want to marry the girl next door and want to forget what it means to be a Jew. And their parents are so proud of them for marrying for love. American Jewish youth are going through a Holocaust. Not a physical one but a spiritual one. They are losing what it means to be a Jew.

Rabbi Kahane realized that the betrayal by the left’s Jewish leaders was disastrous. Even now they are convincing the young that tragedies like the rockets fired at Israel this week by Islamic terrorists in Gaza are somehow Israel’s fault. The complete lack of caring for Jewish self-defense by most Jewish leaders is outright repellent especially after all of the terrible attacks on synagogues and lately on Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn.

 A lot of my friends are being deprived of the ability to learn self-defense because the Jewish Defense League was disassembled and over the last 20 years or more since JDL’s decline tens of thousands of other young Jews were deprived of the basic right of self-defense. Self-defense was one of Rabbi Kahane’s main principles, he knew there would be a day where the Jewish community would not be safe. Today might be the day.