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Tag: R. A.I. Kook

“I Do Not Understand a Single Word of What I Wrote in My Book”: Rav Kook, Saul Lieberman, and a Literary Mishlo’aḥ Manot Exchange

“I Do Not Understand a Single Word of What I Wrote in My Book”: Rav Kook, Saul Lieberman, and a Literary Mishlo’aḥ Manot Exchange

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The festival of Purim, with its customs and traditions, has long constituted a broad and fertile field for a vast body of research, folklore, and ritual practice associated with the “Jewish carnival.” The drinking of wine, the wearing of costumes (which have no foundation in early sources and, in the view of many scholars, were influenced by the Venetian carnival), the use of noisemakers for the purpose of “blotting out Amalek,” and the practice of mishlo’aḥ manot have all added…

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The Man who Tried to Put it All Together: A Hesped for Rav Kook on His Eightieth Yahrzeit

The Man who Tried to Put it All Together: A Hesped for Rav Kook on His Eightieth Yahrzeit

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Yehudah Mirsky is an Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University, and the author of Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (Yale University Press), available here (link). This is his first contribution to the Seforim Blog. Jerusalem of the 1930s was boiled in fury. The inevitability of bitter conflict with the Arabs of Palestine had become too clear to deny, while the fighting among Jews,…

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More on R. Kook’s Recently Published Writings

More on R. Kook’s Recently Published Writings

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In my post here here I mentioned that R. Kook argued that there is good reason to observe mitzvot even if one does not have a traditional view of the Torah’s authorship. On the one hand, there is nothing surprising in this. After all, would anyone tell a non-Orthodox Jew that it is OK if he eats on Yom Kippur? R. Kook’s originality is therefore not seen in the bottom line, but in the argument he uses. He notes that…

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Rav Kook’s Missing Student

Rav Kook’s Missing Student

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Recent years have seen a breakthrough regarding the elusive identity of “Monsieur Chouchani,” the mysterious vagabond who in the capacity of mentor, exerted such an incredibly profound effect upon the Nobel-laureate novelist Elie Wiesel as well as the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas in the post-war, post-Holocaust years in France. I am referring to the identification of Chouchani as none other than Hillel Pearlman, an early student of Rav Kook in his short-lived Jaffa Yeshivah. Pivotal to the identification (which we shall…

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Kalir, False Accusations, and More

Kalir, False Accusations, and More

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1. I now want to return to Kalir and the criticism of me. To recap, I had earlier mentioned how Artscroll originally correctly identified Kalir as post-tannaitic, but later changed what it wrote in order to be in line with Tosafot’s opinion that he was a tanna. Some think that it is wrong to criticize Artscroll by using academic methodology instead of judging them by traditional sources, since they don’t recognize the academic approach. My first response is that this…

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The censorship of Rav Kook and other Hebrew books on Hebrew book databases

The censorship of Rav Kook and other Hebrew books on Hebrew book databases

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Today, censorship of Hebrew books takes place on many levels. Although previously the censorship of Hebrew books was driven in large part due to external concerns, today, most of the censorship takes place internally, by Jews for Jews. This censorship is generally driven by the false notion that Orthodox Judaism is and was monolithic. Of course, students of history know that this is entirely false; within the confines of Orthodoxy, there was diversity of opinion and practice (perhaps due to…

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The Head Movements of Shema’

The Head Movements of Shema’

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Rabbi Bezalel Naor is a multifaceted scholar, recognized as the leading interpreter of R. Kook in the English language. His newest book is The Limit of Intellectual Freedom: The Letters of Rav Kook. It can be purchased from his website, www.orot.com. The most important utterance in Judaism is the Shema’: Shema’ yisrael adonai eloheinu adonai ehad. (Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.) This declaration of the absolute unity of God is the cornerstone of our…

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New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 5

New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 5

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Continued from here. The next post (or perhaps the one following) will return to my analysis of R. Kook’s recently published Li-Nevokhei ha-Dor with which this series began. Yet before doing so, there are a number of other points I would like to make and respond to some comments and questions. 1. In previous installments I have mentioned how R. Kook compares the Torah scholars and the masses, and how the masses have elements of natural morality that are not…

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New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 4

New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 4

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Continued from here. Returning to the issue of creation, I found an interesting comment in R. Hayyim Hirschensohn’s commentary on Rashi, Nimukei Rashi. For those who are unaware of this commentary, I recommend that you examine it. You can order a bound copy (even soft-cover) very cheaply at hebrewbooks.org. I think that this is one of Hirschenson’s greatest works. In his comment to Gen. 1:13 Hirschensohn writes that belief in eternity (which here apparently means eternal matter in the Platonic…

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New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 3

New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 3

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Continued from here. As I have dealt in this post with Maimonides and the Genesis story, it is as good a time as any to mention what I believe it to be an error that is repeated very often. I saw it most recently in Nathan Aviezer’s article “When Torah and Science Collide” (Tradition, Fall 2009). He writes as follows: Did God create the universe? Seemingly a simple question, with the answer given in the very first verse of the…

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New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 2

New Writings from R. Kook and Assorted Comments, part 2

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Continued from here. I must now deal with R. Joseph Ibn Caspi, who is often described as holding a view similar to what we have seen already, but more radical in that he saw it as a general principle of interpretation. I refer to the notion that the Torah incorporates all sorts of untruths because these were what people believed at the time. It is said that this is how Ibn Caspi understands the rabbinic phrase “The Torah speaks in…

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New Writings from R Kook Part 1 by Marc B. Shapiro

New Writings from R Kook Part 1 by Marc B. Shapiro

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20 Marheshvan, 5771 I now want to return to R. Kook and discuss some of his writings that have recently appeared. This is the first of what will be a five part post. It will be followed by at least one other multi-part post also dealing with R. Kook’s new writings. For those who have never read R. Kook and don’t understand why there is such excitement every time a new collection is published, I suggest you do the following:…

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Marc Shapiro: R. Kook on Sacrifices & Other Assorted Comments

Marc Shapiro: R. Kook on Sacrifices & Other Assorted Comments

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1. At the beginning of my previous post (the Gurock review) I mentioned R. Solomon Isaac Scheinfeld (1860-1943). The source of the comment I quote is his Olam ha-Sheker (Milwaukee, 1936), p. 77.1 Scheinfeld was the unofficial chief rabbi in Milwaukee, arriving there in 1902 and serving until his death in 1943. Here is his picture. He had a traditional education, having studied for three years in the Kovno Kollel under R. Isaac Elhanan Spektor, from whom he received semikhah.2…

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