Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

December 5, 2019

A Supposed Letter from Joseph B. Soloveitchik Praising Meir Kahane Is a Fake

A misspelled signature and an uncharacteristic rebuke.

In 1984, Israel’s then-President Chaim Herzog refused to meet with the newly seated parliamentarian Rabbi Meir Kahane, the leader of the now-outlawed Kakh party, despite meeting with the heads of every other party in the Knesset. The refusal no doubt owed to Kahane’s anti-Arab bigotry and sympathy for vigilante violence. Discovered in Herzog’s archives was what appeared to be a letter from the revered American rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik upbraiding him for his frostiness toward Kahane and stating that the latter was “despite his many, many errors, a God-fearing Jew who fights for the honor of Heaven and of the Jewish people.”

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