Reviewing the second installment in a projected three-volume biography of the much-hated American rabbi, written by his widow Libby, Elliot Jager reflects on Kahane’s career and his transformation from leader of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) to leader of the (now-illegal) Israeli political party Kach:

Kahane was one of the most influential, selfless, brilliant American Jewish personalities of the post-World War II era. . . . Under Kahane, the JDL was a catalyst pressuring the U.S. Jewish establishment to put Soviet Jewry, Jewish poverty, and urban anti-Semitism higher on its agenda. Kahane in his original JDL incarnation saved the souls of countless impressionable young Jews from terminal ennui if not outright assimilation. . . .

I found the early Kahane mesmerizing. I first appreciated the enormity of the Shoah because he talked about it when others didn’t. Following him into the street from the auditorium of Hunter College chanting “Never Again” and sitting down on Third Avenue and 67th Street near the Soviet UN mission in Manhattan was like an ecstatic-religious experience for me.

But in his [later] Kach incarnation his ideas sounded reactionary and repugnant. And for most people that is how he is remembered: for saying no to tolerance, no to respect for minority rights, no to religious pluralism, and no to compromise with political opponents.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.