Wherever There Is Jewish Pain

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bthe American Jewish Ledger (New Jersey) in his April 23, 1971, bissue. In a full two-page story, with a first-page banner bheadline reading “Extraordinary Phenomenon of America bToday—Meir Kahane of Jewish Defense League.” Bloom bdescribed in detail my appearance at the New Milford, N.J., bJewish Center. An excerpt from the story read:

b“No speaker today for the Jew is looked forward to with bgreater expectation than Rabbi Meir Kahane, head of the bJewish Defense League. Everywhere he speaks there are bhuge audiences; not only do they fill every seat and line up bagainst the wall, they wait and wait for him to arrive.”

bBloom went on at great length, repeating almost every bpoint I had made, and concluding: “When the audience brealized he was finished with his presentation, the applause bcontinued in wavelengths like the pounding surf.” And then bBloom wrote:

b“One graphic remark was made to your reporter by Jacob bLevine, an attorney who practices in Newark. He heard bKahane give a talk in a shul (synagogue) in Livingston and bamong the things Levine said he heard was an elderly bcouple remark when they were leaving after having heard bKahane, ‘When I came in I hated him. Now that I have bheard him, I love him.’”

bThe ordinary Jew was beginning to see what his leader- bship did not want to see and did not want him to see: that the bideas of JDL were truly Jewish ones, the only ones that could bpromise survival for the Jew both spiritually and physically; band that the means advocated to help Jews, while difficult to baccept for the Jew so long subject to assimilationist, Exile- bminded leadership, nevertheless worked and were begin- bning to do the things that all the timidity, respectability, and bhalting efforts of the leaders had failed to achieve.

bEven so, I must add a frustrating footnote to all the above bgrowing support for the JDL. The Jews came to hear me bspeak and stood in thunderous ovation when I finished. bThey would gather around after the speech and shake my bhand and ask for autographs, for their children. And how bmany times did I hear, again and again, the refrain, “Rabbi, bI am behind you all the way.” What a long line of supporters b