Kahane, Meir

(1932–90)

   Israeli rabbi and communal leader. Kahane was born in New York and educated at New York University and Mirrer Yeshivah. Subsequently he settled in Israel where he founded the Jewish Defence League and the Jewish Identity Centre. Strictly Orthodox, he worked tirelessly for the re- establishment of Israel’s biblical boundaries. Among his many publications was Why Be Jewish? (1977), an uncompromising diatribe against intermarriage and assimilation. Kahane was assassinated by an Arab activist in 1990. KAHN, Louis I. 1901. US architect. Brought to the United States from Estonia at the age of four, Kahn grew up to be one of the leading international architects and town planners. His original and sometimes controversial buildings had a strong impact on modern design. Among them were the Yale Art Gallery, the Richards Medical Research Building, Pennsylvania, and the Phillips Exeter Academy Library, New Hampshire. He became noted for synagogues unconventional in design but conveying a strong religious spirit in the austere and massive exteriors and the use of interior space. He submitted a bold proposal for a new Hurva synagogue in the reconstructed Jewish quarter of the Old City in Jerusalem.