Abraham Isaac Kook

Abstract

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Ha-Cohen Kook (b. 1865–d. 1935) is considered one of the most important modern Jewish thinkers and shaper of some of the most significant trends in Religious Zionism. He was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine and the founder of the institutional state rabbinate, as well as an influential yeshiva known as Mercaz Ha-Rav. Rabbi Kook was known for the breadth and depth of his scholarship across all the branches of traditional Jewish scholarship, including law, philosophy, and Kabbalah as well as his appreciation for contemporary science and non-Jewish philosophy. Witnessing the disaffection or rebellion of Jewish youth from tradition, particularly among the Zionist pioneers in the Land of Israel, he devoted himself with special fervor to the attempted reconciliation of modernity with Orthodox Judaism. To this end, he developed a series of dialectical responses that often seemed to accord spiritual dignity to the characteristic features of modern consciousness—such as burgeoning nationalism and evolutionary historicism—while simultaneously subordinating them to his understanding of Jewish theological imperatives. Though he aroused suspicion and controversy among both secularists and traditionalists, Rabbi Kook was often able to gain their respect and serve as a rare bridge between their communities. Ultimately, his thought contributed to the rise of a distinctively Zionist Religious community dedicated to traditional learning and observance as well as commitment to the Zionist state building project. Though Rabbi Kook himself died in 1935, before either the Holocaust or the establishment of the State of Israel, his thinking remains a vibrant source of inspiration and controversy to this day, and is the subject of voluminous secondary literature. Rabbi Kook’s primary writings included many letters and essays published during his lifetime, but some of his most famous and influential works are the result of significant editing by various disciples, some of which took place posthumously. For a variety of reasons, R. Kook’s original notebooks were not available to scholars until the last few decades, and are now gradually leading to revisions in our understanding of his creative legacy. Despite the intellectual and political vicissitudes of classical “religious Zionism” associated with his name, popular and scholarly interest in R. Kook has only burgeoned in recent years through a spate of academic research, publication of new, more accessible Hebrew versions, and translations primarily into English. His views on prophecy, Jewish law, state building, ethics, and metaphysics remain both provocative and generative today.