Jewish Community Leaders, Rabbis Denounce Kahane

Jewish community leaders here have denounced recently elected Knesset member Rabbi Meir Kahane whose Kach Party demands the ouster of all Arabs from Israel. Kahane, who recently visited the U.S., was also strongly repudiated by the Chicago Board of Rabbis.

Marshall Grossman, chairman of the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation-Council of Greater Los Angeles, joined with leaders of local Jewish organizations to condemn Kahane’s “message of racism and bigotry.”

“The organized Jewish community of Los Angeles unreservedly condemns Meir Kahane,” Grossman said. “There can be no hesitation, no ambiguity, no equivocation in voicing our rejection and condemnation.” The area leaders of the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Board of Rabbis of Southern California, Hadassah, ORT, and the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S. expressed their revulsion at a press conference here.

Kahane, Grossman said, “violates both the letter and the spirit of Israel’s declaration of independence which accords freedom and equality of citizenship to all people regardless of race and religon … and is also antithetical to Jewish law, tradition, ethics and morality and our belief in democratic values.”

Rabbi Herbert Bronstein, president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis, declared that his body “repudiates the extremist and virulent campaign of hatred and intolerance of Rabbi Meir Kahane and considers it a desecration of the fundamental values of Judaism.”