1932-1990
Jewish Rabbi;
Militant Jewish Activist

Beginnings.

Martin David Kahane was born in Brooklyn, the son of a distinguished Hassidic family. His father, a rabbi of an Orthodox synagogue, was an ardent Zionist, working actively to support the Jews in Palestine before the creation of Israel. Meir, as he would later call himself, grew up with both his politics and religion intertwined. In 1946 he joined Betar, a quasi-military, international youth movement which aimed at protecting Jewish people from their enemies. Clearly this involvement was the source of Kahane's cofounding of the Jewish Defense League several years later.

Education.

Kahane was educated in Talmud schools but graduated from a public high school in Brooklyn. He attended Brooklyn College and took a law degree from New York University, but he never took the state bar examination. He married, had four children, and served in the late 1950s as...