Abraham Isaac Kook

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Abraham Isaac Kook (1864 - 1935) a well-known proponent of Religious Zionism, was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine, the founder of the Religious Zionist Yeshiva Merkaz Harav, and a renowned Torah scholar. He is known in Hebrew as הרב אברהם יצחק הכהן קוק HaRav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, and by the acronym HaRaAYaH.

Abraham Isaac Kook was born in Griva, Latvia (a suburb of Daugavpils, then Imperial Russia) in 1865. His father was a student of the Volozhin yeshiva, the heart of mitnagdut, whereas his maternal grandfather was a member of the Hassidic movement.

As a child he gained a reputation of being an ilui (prodigy). He entered the Volozhin yeshiva in 1884 at the age of 18, where he became close to the rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (the Netziv). Although he stayed at the yeshiva for only a year and a half, the Netziv has been quoted as saying that if the Volozhin Yeshiva had been founded just to educate the Rav Kook, it would have been worthwhile. During his time in the yeshiva, he studied about 18 hours a day.

In 1886, he married Batsheva, the daughter of Rabbi Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim, the rabbi of Ponevezh (today's Panevėžys, Lithuania). At the age of 23, he entered his first rabbinical position. In 1895 he became the rabbi of Bausk (now Bauska). Between 1901 and 1904, he published three articles which anticipate the fully-developed philosophy which he developed in the Land of Israel.

In 1904, he came to the Land of Israel to assume the rabbinical post in Jaffa, which also included responsibility for the new secular Zionist agricultural settlements nearby. His influence on people in different walks of life was already noticeable, as he engaged in kiruv ("Jewish outreach"), thereby creating a greater role for Torah and Halakha into the life of the city and the settlements.

The outbreak of the First World War caught him in Europe, and he was forced to remain in London and Switzerland for the remainder of the war. While there, he was involved in the activities which led to the Balfour Declaration, 1917. Upon returning, he was appointed the Rabbi of Jerusalem, and soon after, as first Chief Rabbi in 1921. Rav Kook was a master of Halakha in the strictest sense, while at the same time possessing an unusual openness to new ideas. This drew many religious and non­religious people to him, but also led to widespread misunderstanding of his ideas. He wrote prolifically on both Halakha and Jewish Thought, and his books and personality continued to influence many even after his death in Jerusalem in 1935.

He built bridges of communication and political alliances between the secular Jewish Zionist leadership and the Religious Zionism movement. He believed, according to his theological system, that the youthful, secular and even anti-religious Labor Zionist pioneers halutzim were a part of a grand divine scheme whereby the land and people of Israel were finally being redeemed from the 2,000 year exile (galut) by all manner of Jews who sacrificed themselves for the cause of building up the physical land, as laying the groundwork for the ultimate spiritual messianic redemption of world Jewry.

His empathy towards the anti-religious elements aroused the suspicions of his more traditionalist haredi opponents, particularly that of the old-time rabbinical establishment that had functioned from the time of Turkey's control of greater Palestine, whose paramount leader was Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, Rabbi Kook's greatest rabbinical rival.

The Israeli moshav Kfar Haroe, founded in 1934, was named after Rabbi Kook, "Haroe" being the Hebrew acronym הרא"ה – "HaRav Avraham HaCohen".

See also

• Religious Zionism

External links

• Introduction to the Thought of Rav Kook, vbm-torah.org
• Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, ou.org
• Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), Prof. Eliezer Segal
• Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, jewishvirtuallibrary.org
• Rav Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook (1865 – 1935), zionist.org.uk
• Life and Priciples, mizrachi.org
• Time-line of Rav Kook's life
• The Yeshiva he founded...today
• Rav Kook and Rav Shlomo Elyashev zt'l ("Leshem")

Resources

• Writings
  • Orot, Abraham Isaac Kook, translation Bezalel Naor, Jason Aronson 1993. ISBN 1568210175
  • Orot ha-teshuvah, Abraham Isaac Kook, translation Alter Ben-Zion Metzger, Bloch Pub. Co., 1968. ASIN B0006DXU94

• Analysis
  • The Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, Zvi Yaron, Eliner Library, 1992.
  • Essays on the Thought and Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, ed. Ezra Gellman, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991. ISBN 0838634524
  • The World of Rav Kook's Thought, Shalom Carmy, Avi-Chai Publishers, 1991. ISBN 0962372323
  • Rav Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook: Between Rationalism and Mysticism, Benjamin Ish-Shalom, translation Ora Wiskind Elper, SUNY Press, 1993. ISBN 0791413691de:Abraham Isaak Kook

he:אברהם יצחק הכהן קוק