Jewish Vigilantes

They wear blue berets and brandish baseball bats. They profess fear of genocide and want to train their youth for combat. Some have been involved in campus brawls and dustups at political rallies. Last week they ran a $2,790 newspaper ad in New York showing six young men standing before a building with clubs in hand. In an age of Black Panthers, white vigilantes, and apparently millions of armed and angry individuals, there would already seem to be a surfeit of quasi-military partisans. Threat, however, tends to breed counterthreat. Out of the people traditionally identified with the word ghetto has come an unusual group called the Jewish Defense League--whose members posed before a synagogue for last week's ad and called themselves "nice Jewish boys."

The league was started last year by Orthodox Rabbi Meir Kahane, 36, a former lawyer who helps edit an emotional weekly devoted to Jewish affairs and who ministers to the congregation of the Rochdale Village Traditional Synagogue in the New York City borough of Queens. "We see here the beginnings of the 1920s in prewar Germany," warns Kahane. "This is a question of Jewish survival--nothing else." The newspaper ad, which Kahane wrote, declares: "Maybe some people and organizations are too nice. Maybe--just maybe --nice people build their own road to Auschwitz."

What has agitated Kahane and his followers is the rash of anti-Jewish statements made by some extremists, both black and white, during the past year.

New York has been particularly tense since the fight over neighborhood control of schools pitted Negro leaders, as well as city hall, against the heavily Jewish teachers' union (TIME cover, Jan. 31). For years, of course, neo-Nazi groups have also been taunting--and provoking--Jews.

Unwanted Protection. The Defense League's response so far has been to picket public meetings, bait Mayor John Lindsay, provide armed escorts for Jewish teachers in slum neighborhoods, and scuffle with Nazi Party members. J.D.L. also sued to reopen the City College of New York this spring after a student demonstration temporarily closed the campus.

In May, 30 members arrived at New York's Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue with clubs and chains in anticipation of a disruptive visit by Black Militant James Forman, who had been demanding "reparations" from white churches. The league intended to bar Forman from entering--despite the temple officials' stated willingness to hear him speak and to listen to his arguments. A showdown was avoided when the black leader failed to appear on schedule. Now the league is planning a nine-week camp program near Woodbourne, N.Y., to train members in such things as the use of karate, the handling of firearms, and the arts and techniques of street-corner debating.

Established Jewish organizations adamantly oppose the league and its adherents.* Says Samuel Dalsimer, national chairman of B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League: "We find the group's paramilitary operations and sensationalist appeals an embarrassment and a potential danger." Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, calls the would-be defenders "batmen" and "hoodlums." The league's obvious potential for increasing racial animosity and group hatred and tension is particularly alarming. "We are entering a period when everyone who is for or against something feels he must take the law into his own hands," Eisendrath observes. "For Jews to follow this is to belie our history. A minority such as ours cannot be productive unless it exists in a live-and-let-live condition." Rabbi Kahane replies that his "happiest day" will be the one on which the league can go out of business for want of a mission. Meanwhile, he appears completely serious about going ahead.

* Kahane counts 5,700 followers in 17 cities. A check by TIME correspondents revealed no visible organization except in New York and San Francisco. Estimates by other Jewish organizations suggest that the league has perhaps a thousand members; considerably fewer are available for ultramilitant activities.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.