On Wednesday, February 23, the Institute was joined by Shaul Magid, where he spoke about his latest book Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical published with Princeton University n October 2021. Meir Kahane is well-known for his hijacking the Soviet Jewry Movement in late 1969 and using civil disobedience and violence as a tactic to get Soviet Jewry in the news. But Soviet Jewry is far more complex issue for him and illustrated his long-time stance against communism and his belief in the Russian-Sino-Arab triangle, thus linking Soviet Jewry, Vietnam and Israel. In this talk, Shaul Magid will work though some of these issues in his Kahane’s writings, including his 1967 book The Jewish Stake in Vietnam, and his testimony to Congress on Soviet Jewry in June 1968.
Shaul Magid is Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Author of many books and essays, his two latest books are The Bible, the Talmud and the New Testament: Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik’s Commentary to the Gospel, and Piety and Rebellion: Essay in Hasidism, both published in 2019. His new book Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical was published with Princeton University Press in October, 2021. He is presently working on the political theology of Yoel Teitelbaum of Satmar.