"Harav Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook" ("Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook") by Avinoam Rosnak, Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, Great Jewish Thinkers series, 283 pages, NIS 78.50

When a new book is published on Rabbi Kook, there should be some justification for it. Authors of innumerable hagiographies and research studies have pored over the life and work of this fascinating rabbinic leader and respected thinker. Therefore, when another book is published, one always looks for the new findings or special perspective it may offer. Because Avinoam Rosnak's biography of Rabbi Kook is part of a series "geared to the public at large and written in accessible prose," it may be asking too much to expect new scientific findings. But there is no reason not to look for a new angle.

Rosnak's writing is fluid and graceful, making the book a pleasure to read. That is no small achievement, especially if one considers the academic underpinnings of the text. Rosnak skillfully guides us through the mass of research on Rabbi Kook, and only sharp-eyed readers will sense how much scholarship lies beneath. So while the book is recommended to anyone interested in the life of Rabbi Kook, experts in the field will find it valuable, too.

	Advertisement

But what special perspective does it offer? For starters, Rosnak does a fine job of weaving together history and philosophy. He finds the critical links between the ideological and biographical-intellectual sides of Rabbi Kook's personality, and his approach to politics and social issues. That is a certainly laudable. But Rosnak's genuine contribution lies in suggesting the "unity of opposites" principle as a key to Rabbi Kook's thinking. According to this approach, the divine goal is achieved through opposites. For Rosnak, abstract philosophical and dialectical principles are the basis for understanding Rabbi Kook's rabbinic decisions.

Does Rosnak's approach exhaust all the possibilities? Of course not. A book with an eye to broader audiences should, by right, have presented readers with additional ways of looking at the intriguing story of Rabbi Kook. Below are some other avenues that should have been explored.

Identity search

Rosnak points out that in his younger years (1899), Rabbi Kook wrote about establishing an association of religious Zionists; the religious Zionist Mizrachi party, founded in 1902, was already the drawing board at the time. One unanswered question is why Rabbi Kook was so negative, and even antagonistic, toward Mizrachi. He never joined it, and his movement, Degel Yerushalayim, threatened to crush it. His opposition to the establishment of a magistrate court system, along with certain actions taken in the formative days of the chief rabbinate, were interpreted as openly dismissive toward the religious Zionist movement: He did not invite its rabbis for consultations, passing over them to meet with the rabbis of the old Yishuv (pre-state Jewish community).

Rabbi Kook was able to accommodate dichotomy - pioneers who ate forbidden food, but settled the land inspired by God's presence, alongside Jews of the old Yishuv, whose piety bordered on fanaticism. But he could not accept the compromise of a religious movement that embraced the national idea as one of its coordinates. Maybe the emergence of Mizrachi threw a wrench into his early dreams, and he could never get over it. One way or another, Rabbi Kook's attitude to Mizrachi was significant and its implications need to be discussed.

Rosnak calls Rabbi Kook "the prophet of messianic religious Zionism." But religious Zionism is an institutional phenomenon. The great religious Zionist revolution in 1902 marked the first formal link to a secular body: the Zionist Organization. It was an unequivocal declaration of partnership with an institution of "sinners." Rabbi Kook never officially recognized sinners as genuine partners. In his eyes, outreach was fine, and about empathy there was no question. But open collaboration was something to be avoided, which is why he never joined forces with institutionalized religious Zionism.

His attitude toward Mizrachi was perhaps another expression of his search for political identity. The fact that he weighed an alliance with the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisrael before World War I was not just a noble gesture to bring the movement closer to his religious Zionist ideas; it showed that he was searching for identity. His disappointment with Agudat Yisrael as a "political umbrella" led, in the long run, to the establishment of Degel Yerushalayim.

By the same token, various actions that occurred throughout his life, from immigration to Palestine to the establishment of the chief rabbinate, can be seen as calculated political maneuvers to win him the post of chief rabbi. He knew that Mizrachi would support him because the movement was interested in the patronage of well-known rabbis, of which it had few. He gained the backing of the Zionist pioneers with his ideology, his tour of the agricultural colonies and his "heter mekhira" ruling - an arrangement whereby land was sold to a non-Jew to get around the biblical injunction of allowing the fields to lie fallow every seven years. In the old Yishuv, he was able to garner some support through his opposition to secular courts and electoral rights for women.

Messianic ideology

Messianism undoubtedly played a role in Rabbi Kook's drive to become chief rabbi, a post he regarded as a vehicle for putting his messianic ideology into practice. From his perspective, a chief rabbinate was the first step toward reconvening the ancient Jewish court system, the Sanhedrin - and who was more worthy than Kook of sitting at its head? This lofty goal and paving the way for redemption were clearly his primary concerns. But in order to implement his vision, Rabbi Kook employed tactics that were purely political. Some succeeded and others failed, but in the end, he got the job. This interpretation of Rabbi Kook's actions is worth a closer examination.

At the end of the book, Rosnak writes: "There will always be a gap between Rabbi Kook and the portrait of him sketched by his followers, even if one of them is Kook's son, who was close to him and inspired by his father's writings for many decades." Even that assumption does not spur Rosnak into wider speculation. Certainly it is worthy of being presented as a possible insight into the world of Rabbi Kook, even if it seems historically improbable that his disciples, who maintained close and continuous contact with him over long periods of time, would not be sufficiently knowledgeable about the complexity of his personality and its implications.

Rosnak's book testifies to the ideological and social buzz surrounding the figure of Rabbi Kook. Today, when various components of the religious Zionist community are undergoing fundamental change, the life and work of Rabbi Kook have not lost their fascination and continue to be the source of lively debate.

Rosnak has written a book that deepens our familiarity with the man and his teachings, and therein lies its importance.

Prof. Dov Schwartz is the author of "Etgar vemashber behug harav Kook," ("Challenge and Crisis in Rabbi Kook's Circle"), published by Am Oved (in Hebrew).