2025-08-19 12:31 AM <br/> Tags: #people #ReligiousJudaism #Yishuv #EarlyZionism #Israel ![[image-89.png|299x485]] # Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) - *Also known as Rav Kook, HaRav Kook, and Kook the elder.* - Abraham Isaac Kook is the religious founding father of Israel. He is revered as a near divine figure in religious Zionism. - Kook's life and legacy are foundational to the religious angle of Zionism and Israel as a state. - Kook provided religious justification for the Zionist project against most orthodox thought at the time. #### Rav Kook Early history - Abraham Kook was a Latvian born orthodox Jewish rabbi. - Kook was considered a prodigy of talmudic thought from a young age. - Kook arrived in Ottoman controlled Palestine in 1905. - Kook had been invited to become the rabbi of Jaffa. - Kook spent WWI in Britain where he became a notable religious voice in favor of the Zionist [[Balfour Declaration]]. #### Kook in the Yishuv - Kook returned to Palestine after WWI, now in British control. - In 1921, Kook became the first chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Palestine. - Kook is considered the founder of Israel's [[Chief Rabbinate]]. - The Chief Rabbinate is a legally recognized Rabbinical authority position in Israel. - The Chief Rabbinate includes a Chief Ashkenazi rabbi, and a Chief Sephardic rabbi. - Kook became a prominent figure in [[Yishuv]] politics. - Kook was chosen to chair the annual Jewish National Council meeting. - The JNC was the assembly of elected Jewish representatives in the quasi governing entity of the [[Yishuv]]. - As a Judaic religious authority, Kook devised legal workarounds to Jewish law for the benefit of the Zionist project. - There is a Jewish concept called *Heter Mechira* which circumvents laws which forbid the working of land during the "Shemitah" year. >[!Info] Heter The Jewish concept "Heter" is a "rabbinical permission slip." Heter is granted by rabbis to deviate from specific Jewish laws in a way that somehow still fulfills proper observance. - The Shemitah year also known as sabbatical year, occurs once every seven years. - The Jewish settlements in Palestine relied on farming, thus taking a year off could have had dire ramifications. - Kook devised a legal ploy granting leniency in the obligation for Jewish farmers to observe the Shemitah year. - Part of Kook's circumventing of Jewish law involved temporarily selling farmland to non-Jews for the year and allowing them to work the land instead of Jews. - Rav Kook saw the mostly secular Zionist project as a divine component that, when combined with the religious element, would usher in the "messianic era." #### Kook and the Revisionists - Kook formed a warm relationship with [[Revisionist Zionism]] founder and leader [[Ze'ev Jabotinsky]] in 1920. - Kook wrote to Jabotinsky and his followers while they were in a British prison calling them "pure hero's" and "beloved sons." - Later in the 20s Jabotinsky's ideology was transformed by the writings of Kook. - Jabotinsky regarding religious Judaism after reading Kook: "For the first time in my spiritual life, my heart opened to that same ancient terrain." - In 1933 after Jabotinsky's accused involvement in the death of a political rival, Kook called Jabotinsky "an angel of god." (Yeshivat Har Bracha 2019) #### Kook in the United States - Kook spent eight months in the United States in 1924. - The trip was for the purpose of raising funds for Jewish religious institutions in Palestine and Europe. - Kook first visited New York where he met with NYC mayor John Hylan. - Kook visited many US cities including Washington DC where he met President Calvin Coolidge. - Kook is reported to have made a deep positive impression on the President. - At the end of his US trip, Kook described American Jewry as a "hidden treasure." - Kook envisioned a world with two centers of Jewish life - the US and Israel. #RedPill *I will note something not entirely evident about the dynamic of US Jewry. Kook did not speak English during his 1924 visit. The Jewish masses he spoke to listened in Hebrew. When Kook met the NYC mayor, President Coolidge, etc., he spoke Hebrew. He knew English, but used Hebrew. The Jews by whom Kook was received also spoke Hebrew (and Yiddish); they were considered fully American yet had a shared foreign dialect. The Jewish diaspora has survived across time and nations through these shared distinctions.* #### Legacy - Kook the elder founded the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem in 1924. - After Kook's death, Mercaz HaRav was led by his son [[Zvi Yehuda Kook]]. - Mercaz HaRav became the nucleus of religious Zionism in Israel under Yehuda. - Mercaz HaRav produced generations of disciples explicitly aligned with Kook the elder. - Mercaz HaRav spawned much of the Israeli settler movement in the occupied territories. - Students of Mercaz HaRav founded the [[Gush Emunim]] far right settler movement in the 1970s. - Kook was the founding-influence on the [[Religious Zionists of America (Mizrachi)]] during his 1924 visit. #### Quotes - “The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews - all of them in all different levels - is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.” #### Family - Kook's nephew was [[Irgun and Lehi Zionist Paramilitary Organizations|Irgun]] operative [[Hillel Kook]]. - Kook's son was [[Zvi Yehuda Kook]]. - Kook's son, highly influential in Israeli religious Judaism, was far more extreme than his father. #### References - Rav Kook Torah. _Behar: The Hetter Mechirah for the Sabbatical Year._ Accessed August 18, 2025. [https://ravkooktorah.org/BEHAR_65.htm](https://ravkooktorah.org/BEHAR_65.htm). - Alison Weir, _Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel_ (Charlottesville, VA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014). - **“Former Chief Rabbi of Israel Says Non‑Jews Born Only to Serve Jews,”** _IMEMC News_, October 25, 2010, accessed August 16, 2025, [https://imemc.org/article/59734/](https://imemc.org/article/59734/). - Yeshivat Har Bracha. 2019. _Jabotinsky – Vision, Dedication and Faith._ August 2. Accessed August 18, 2025. [https://en.yhb.org.il/jabotinsky-the-vision-dedication-and-faith/](https://en.yhb.org.il/jabotinsky-the-vision-dedication-and-faith/). - “Abraham Isaac Kook.” _Wikipedia_. Last modified August 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Isaac_Kook - Mirsky, Yehudah. _Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution._ New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. - Ravitzky, Aviezer. _Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism._ Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. - “Abraham Isaac Kook.” _Encyclopedia Britannica._ [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abraham-Isaac-Kook](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abraham-Isaac-Kook) - “Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak.” _YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe._ https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article.aspx/Kook_Avraham_Yitshak - “Abraham Isaac Kook.” _Jewish Virtual Library_ (Encyclopedia Judaica). https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/abraham-isaac-kook - Dorman, Joseph “Rav Kook: The Leading Thinker of Religious Zionism,” interview with Yehudah Mirsky. Brandeis University (Sept. 9, 2022). https://www.brandeis.edu/jewish-experience/history-culture/2022/september/kook-zionism-mirsky.html - Jachter, Chaim. “The Heter Mechira - Part One.” _Kol Torah_ (Apr. 23, 2018). https://www.koltorah.org/halachah/the-heter-mechira-part-one-by-rabbi-howard-jachter - Dunner, Pini. “No More a Hidden Treasure: Rav Kook’s Visit to America, 1924.” (June 6, 2023). https://rabbidunner.com/no-more-a-hidden-treasure/ - “Mercaz HaRav.” _Wikipedia_ (institutional overview). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercaz_HaRav