The logo of the Kach, Meir Kahane's militant ultra-Zionist group. Credit: Creative Commons/Shuki

Yasha Levine published an amazing, little known story that was there in the bright light of day for anyone to report (but which no one did). He discovered in Jeffrey Goldberg‘s magnum opus, Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror (first published, 2006), that the latter was a youthful hasid (follower) of the American-Jewish ultra-nationalist, Meir Kahane:

…Soon enough I came across the writings of Meir Kahane, on a high shelf, and it was Kahane who provided a not un-Panther-like but specifically Semitic model of self-defense. Kahane was the Brooklyn rabbi who founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968 to shake Jews out of their fatalistic and feminized passivity. He argued, infamously, in favor of the bat, the bomb, and the gun. (“Every Jew a .22,” he said, to the shame and horror of the Manhattan Jewish elite and to the secret joy of every beaten-down Jewboy in the tristate area.) . . .But for a time he held all the answers for me. In the locker room, I was a kike, but in the sanctuary of the library, I was a revolutionary kike, one of Kahane’schayas, a beast, a street-fighting Jew.

Goldberg currently blogs at The Atlantic and was a staff writer for The New Yorker. He is a sort of Jewish media mandarin who defines what is polite pro-Israelism in American society. He is one of the most popular arbiters of Jewish politics. If you pass muster, you become part of the acceptable Jewish mainstream. If not, you are sentenced to a form of anti-Israel Siberia.

Hurricane Sandy Image c/o Huffington Post

This month has been one of personal, professional, and national shifts, storms, and graces. So much so that I can think of no better way to represent this conflux than by sharing my “sermonette” from last night’s worship service in my young adult ministry program.

In the last 30 days I turned 33, I found some beautiful progress and graces in the world of my ministry work, and struggled at a distance with the pain and tragedy of my home state, New Jersey and our neighboring adjacent-hometown of New York City. I spent my life, at different points, wandering the coastline of the Jersey Shore during summer vacation, hopping through the subway and wandering around the Lower East Side when I cut school as a high schooler (oops!) to sitting in Washington Square Park in between graduate school classes at NYU. Now my middle school in Summit, NJ is a “heating station” and crisis center, the YMCA is where mass showers are being taken, and no one is hopping on the subway to anywhere.

From my personal heart to yours I share the “sermonette” I gave last night to my spiritual seekers in Delray Beach. Blessings and prayers to all who suffer and are lost–in this tragedy and in the world at large. This essay was written for all of you.