"The difference is that if we turn from the Gentile first, we will have the Almighty as the immediate staff and our comfort. If not, we will have neither the Gentile nor, for a terrible stage, the Almighty"
About this Quote
Kahane’s sentence weaponizes theology as political leverage: God is not a moral horizon here, but a bargaining chip in a grim cost-benefit calculus. The line turns on “difference,” as if he’s offering a pragmatic policy memo, then pivots into a stark ultimatum: choose separation from “the Gentile” and receive “the Almighty” as “immediate staff,” or choose coexistence and risk losing both human alliance and divine favor. It’s faith framed as operational logistics.
The most revealing word is “turn.” It implies a decisive act of withdrawal, not negotiation, and it casts the non-Jewish other as a dangerous dependency. “Gentile” is used less as a descriptor than as a boundary marker, a way of making social proximity feel like spiritual contamination. The subtext is classic siege psychology: the outside world is unreliable, and reliance on it is not just naive but sinful. That sets up the emotional hook: fear, then purity as relief.
The phrase “for a terrible stage” is doing heavy work. It’s an eschatological threat disguised as realism: if you don’t obey now, a punishing interim will follow, during which even God withholds comfort. That’s coercion by delay and dread, a rhetorical technique that sanctifies hardship as corrective discipline.
Context matters. Kahane spoke as a militant rabbi and political agitator in the late 20th-century Jewish nationalist milieu, arguing for radical separation and expulsion. This line isn’t devotional; it’s mobilizing rhetoric, designed to make extremity feel like the only faithful, and therefore safest, option.
The most revealing word is “turn.” It implies a decisive act of withdrawal, not negotiation, and it casts the non-Jewish other as a dangerous dependency. “Gentile” is used less as a descriptor than as a boundary marker, a way of making social proximity feel like spiritual contamination. The subtext is classic siege psychology: the outside world is unreliable, and reliance on it is not just naive but sinful. That sets up the emotional hook: fear, then purity as relief.
The phrase “for a terrible stage” is doing heavy work. It’s an eschatological threat disguised as realism: if you don’t obey now, a punishing interim will follow, during which even God withholds comfort. That’s coercion by delay and dread, a rhetorical technique that sanctifies hardship as corrective discipline.
Context matters. Kahane spoke as a militant rabbi and political agitator in the late 20th-century Jewish nationalist milieu, arguing for radical separation and expulsion. This line isn’t devotional; it’s mobilizing rhetoric, designed to make extremity feel like the only faithful, and therefore safest, option.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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