Shmuel Sackett

Shmuel (Seth) Sackett is a religious Zionist leader. He co-founded both the Zo Artzeinu and Manhigut Yehudit ("Jewish Leadership") political movements in Israel.

During the 1990s Zo Artzeinu opposed the Oslo Accords through civil disobedience. In 1998, Sackett co-founded Manhigut Yehudit with long-time partner Moshe Feiglin.

Sackett was born in the United States and studied at Touro College in New York. He was educated in both Talmudic scholarship and secular academic subjects. He had been involved in Jewish youth work and in Jewish educational outreach to secular Jews, some of whom became baal teshuvas ("returnees to Judaism") under his tutelage. He worked in Wall Street's Financial District before making Aliyah to Israel and settling in the West Bank in 1990.

Sackett had been a member of the JDL in the 1970s and a loyal follower of Kach leader Rabbi Meir Kahane in the United States.[1] Sackett eventually followed Kahane to Israel where he joined Kach, and later, Kahane Chai.[2] And became the director of Kahane Chai.[3] After Feiglin's election to the Knesset in 2013, Sackett authored an article on the Manhigut Yehudit website rejecting calls from supporters that he and Feiglin renounce Kahane.[4] He co-founded Zo Artzeinu with Moshe Feiglin in 1993.

While Sackett was a close friend of Kahane's son, Rabbi Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane, he disagreed with the younger Kahane's tactics. Sackett and Feiglin shared some of Meir Kahane's goals, such as creating a more Jewish and secure Israel (and, like Kahane, advocated the "transfer" of Arabs outside the country), but wished to achieve them via nonviolent methods.

Sackett presently works as Manhigut's International Director. He has residences in both Woodmere, New York and Karnei Shomron, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. He is married, with six children.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ JPost Kahane, wife killed by terrorists by Margot Dudkevitch
  2. ↑ Jewish news weekly of Northern California Right-wingers view themselves as conspiracy victims by Larry Derfner
  3. ↑ Richard J. Chasdi (2002) Tapestry of Terror: A Portrait of Middle East Terrorism, 1994-1999 Lexington Books, ISBN 0-7391-0355-5 p 316
  4. ↑ Sackett, Schmuel. "An Answer to Plaut from Feiglin's Kahanist". Manhigut Yehudit. Retrieved 16 February 2013.

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