Rabbi Meir Kahane: His Life and Thought 1932-1975 by Libby Kahane (2008, Hardcover)

Rabbi Meir Kahane was born in New York City in 1932. He studied at the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn, receiving rabbinic ordination in 1956. That same year, he completed his law studies at New York Law School, and he subsequently received a master’s degree in international law from New York University. After serving as a congregational rabbi, he founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968 in order to combat the rise in antisemitism. Concerned about the alienation and assimilation of Jewish youth, Rabbi Kahane spent two decades touring American college campuses, exhorting Jewish students to learn about Judaism, make aliya to Israel and stand up proudly as Jews. In 1970, he spearheaded a campaign of Jewish activism that led to the emigration of tens of thousands of oppressed Jews from the Soviet Union. He entered the political arena in Israel when he made aliya in 1971 and was a member of the Israeli Knesset from 1984 to 1988. He wrote several best-selling books, including Never Again!, Why Be Jewish? and The Story of the Jewish Defense League. His widely-read weekly columns appeared in The Jewish Press from 1961 to 1990.

All of the background information for the above till 1975 is to be found in the book.

"This is an extraordinary tale of a man with a vision and a mission, whose life's journey was passionately directed to promoting Torah, Jewish pride and power, and the Zionist dream. Rabbi Meir Kahane, teacher, writer, and activist, is portrayed in exceptional detail and vividness, a kind of day-to-day serial drama. His boundless dedication to the Jewish people, skillfully animated and painstakingly documented in this comprehensive biography, can serve as an inspiration for Jewish youth today, as he did in his lifetime. A major figure in modern Jewish history, Meir Kahane can now be judiciously assessed and appreciated through this new and gripping volume."
–Dr. Mordechai Nisan, author of Toward a New Israel: The Jewish State and the Arab Question (lectures on the Middle East)


"Your biography is well-written and meticulously researched. (Your years of work as a librarian, which you discuss in your manuscript, clearly came in handy.) The combination of memoir and biography works well, and the narrative is structured around a combination of interviews and careful archival research that largely lets your late husband speak for himself, with only limited editorializing on your part, which was a very wise decision...

A work of scholarship that attempts to contextualize his actions both personally and historically, and let readers draw their own conclusion.… You try to show the person, the husband and father, behind his bitterly controversial political persona.

It will be a major addition to our knowledge of a very turbulent period in Jewish history."
–Dr. Peter Eisenstadt, editor in chief, Encyclopedia of New York State and Encyclopedia of New York City

I personally could not put the book down till my eyes became all fuzzy. Great read!