Did Rabbi Meir Kahane Really "Get Ger"?

20 Menachem Av 5776

For those unfamiliar with the false messianism* of the "Ger" cult, I'll encapsulate it. Two self-described "Orthodox" rabbis, American olim, started a "movement" which they call "Ger" and claim it is based on recovered ancient knowledge, i.e. the "Torah of Shem". 

In short, it claims that nearly every reference to "ger" in the Torah is referring to gentiles and even claims that the righteous Ruth, the quintessential convert, never became a Jew, but remained a gentile. A blog post is too limited to get into this matter in great detail. For our purposes today, it's enough to address this blatant slander of Rabbi Kahane's name.

I owe who I am today as a Jew to Rabbi Meir Kahane. There is no Torah teacher I admire more. He was the embodiment of Emet and to have his name associated in any way with such a corruption of the Torah and Torah sources is something that I cannot remain silent about.

Unfortunately, Rabbi Kahane did not live long enough to witness the exponential growth of missionary infiltration into Israel or the tragic deterioration of what passes today for "Orthodox" Judaism. In 1990, he was invited by Vendyl Jones to participate in the First Noahide Conference, which he graciously did. But, the rabbi was addressing people he understood to be true Sons of Noah as described by our Torah and Sages and not the perversion of that ideal that exists today.

Those who today lay claim to Vendyl's legacy recently organized the Vendyl Jones Memorial Conference. It was essentially a "Ger" conference. Simply by virtue of his having been in attendance at the original, Rabbi Kahane's name figured large in the pre-conference publicity and one of the lectures was dedicated to his contribution to "Ger".

That's really rather funny because, were he here with us today, Rabbi Kahane would be their most feared and intractable enemy.

A portion of that lecture given by "Rabbi" David Katz has been transcribed below. It speaks for itself.

...When it came time for the conference I was just kind of playing around with Meir Kahane, again it's the Vendyl conference and Meir was there and the 1990 thing so I talked to my good friend... so he's like Meir Kahane this and Meir Kahane that and, in fact, I'm only friends with this guy because I was teaching Kol HaTor Mashiach ben Yosef and he kept telling me Meir Kahane taught about Mashiach ben Yosef, too, so I thought...maybe he's alright. So, I bought the book [Rabbi Kahane's Or Hara'ayon] coming up to this conference. I don't know how you would translate it into English . It's not so translatable. The concept of light or the idea of light, I don't know how you call it... so, I started to research it coming up to this conference and I saw very quickly, I was looking through the Table of Contents, you know, where's the Ger, where's the Ger, there's gotta be Ger here, um, and there was.

There was a chapter about the non-Jew. And so, I opened it up and I did it pretty quick. I wasn't planning on hashing it out to that extent and I'm seeing, maybe he got Ger, maybe not, I don't know, this is, ...usually I don't get stumped by Ger stuff, but this one, he's got me. Literally, I'm not sure...maybe he didn't get it, he's wrong because everyone said he was wrong, he says he's right but we say he's wrong, but I don't know, maybe he did get it, I don't know, so I ruled in my own mind, he didn't get it, no, he didn't get it, he didn't get it and I gave a look again and ...I'll give it to him, maybe he got it a little bit, but he's not saying what we're saying because the difference is, this is where the teaching's gonna begin, Ger Toshav, whatever that is, can really go one of two ways, it's gonna be our friend the Ger, our good Ger, he's an awesome guy, you can call him all these different terms in the Torah, Ger Chasid and all your friendly Ger, and then there's your slave Ger, he's our servant, he makes us coffee, so I'm saying I think he's making slave Ger, [Rabbi Kahane's] not our friend. He doesn't know the Chasid Ger, he doesn't know him, so pewey on Rav Meir Kahane, right? But, he got Ger a little bit so I'll give him some respect. And I kept looking at it, and I just kept, you know, because he words it very difficult so either he really didn't get it or he got it so well,....

So, he started to win me over, because remember how many are getting Ger on this level? I say the Lubavitcher Rebbe...he gets Ger 10 out of 10, he is your best friend, Rebbe Nachman got ger 10 out of 10, he is your best friend, ...Rav Aharon Soloveitchik...the Ger authority of all time...[Rabbi Soloveitchik's book Od Yisrael Yosef Bnei Chai] is like the Ger Bible...when you get your Ger friends in Torah, it's a select company, it's a select company, not many people make my personal Mount Rushmore. ...so when you tell me Rav Meir Kahane is gonna be on my Mount Rushmore, man it better be worth it, alright, I'm telling you, you better earn your way up there because otherwise you're saying that the Gerim are slaves, this and that, we don't have that, alright? Our friends Rashi, Rambam, these are our Ger friends, alright, we do not pervert the Ger line. So, I was willing to even come here tonight and say that he got it just on emuna alone. I read enough about it, I live a busy life with all my other things, I'm not devoting that much time to this sefer, it's just not worth my time. He's Meir Kahane and then something changed. It's called a nice flight in the air so I had my eleven hours on Sunday, I was being kind of rough, I knew it was good and I knew I had what to talk about, ok, but I would give it a B+, ...which means he knew the sources and he was coming through, alright, and he was not a threat, and it would be interesting content for tonight...I mean he got a lot of things right, but not Ger.

After describing his 11-hour flight with a few jokes, the speaker returns to the subject of Rabbi Kahane and seems to imply that after spending further time perusing Or HaRa'ayon, he came to a different conclusion...

I had this gap of time and I'm telling you it was bomb after bomb after bomb, and I think he's the world record-holder. He's my guy. He came through. Meir, Rav Meir Kahane, he is the Ger guy. He is the one. I'm telling you he got it on levels I've never, he gave answers to questions.... this guy got it on such a level all you can say is he even got the little dinky Ger or maybe Ger is that big as someone who gets the truth is gonna get Ger, go to Ger, and it wasn't so small and random after all. Anyone on a path of truth is gonna run into Ger and we see it in our lives and our learning. It's not an accident... The Ger is the whole Torah. It's the path to Mashiach.... The challenge is to unite these two visions [i.e., the current Ger movement and what Rabbi Kahane taught regarding ger toshav].

B"H, Rabbi Kahane can speak for himself through the works that he left behind. So, you be the judge.

The Ger Toshav: Excerpts from The Non-Jew in Eretz Yisrael by Rabbi Meir Kahane in Or HaRa'ayon, Chapter 20
___________________________

Although the following is not particularly concerned with Rabbi Kahane, I'm including it here since it is part of this lecture given in Rabbi Kahane's name and it will demonstrate for you just how 'OFF' this so-called movement is...

[Concerning the Yefe Toar - the foreign woman taken in war] ...those women are called Ger, they're kosher to a Jew, even the Cohen Gadol can and did marry those women. How many of you have ever heard of Ruth? She was a Ger. And she was not a convert and she married a Jew. And that child becomes a Jew. I taught this in England. The midrash Rabbah on Parshas Naso, which is one of the biggest collections of Ger Torah that exists says, if a woman sanctifies her womb with modesty and purity of the Jewish code of excellence, let's call it, she marries a Jew, that child is a Jew. That's what became of Ruth and Boaz which gave us King David eventually. I taught that in London and they're like, no, no way... he admitted it was true, but his fear was you're gonna promote intermarriage with that and I said, you need to be a little smart about it. I found a book in Modiin by a rav today who is popular... it is literally written there, in stone, that a ger toshav in a time of jubilee can marry a Jew. And Ruth was the example. So, I guess I learned it ok. ...Ger woman allowed to Jewish man. ...Ger is the fourth house of Israel.

It actually gets worse, but we're short on space here. To conclude, NO WAY would Rabbi Meir Kahane, ztz"l, Hy"d, "Get Ger"!! Or agree to have his name associated with it in any positive way or that his writings would be characterized as supporting it. I have no doubt whatsoever that every legitimate student of Rabbi Kahane would agree with me. And all of them will be provided with a copy of this blog post for reference.