Jerusalem: Rav Abraham Isaac Kook founds Mercaz HaRav Kook Yeshiva
The yeshiva will be known later simply as Mercaz HaRav.
A. I. Kook born 1865 CE in Griva, Latvia; dies 1935 CE in Jerusalem.
Kook becomes Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine in 1921…
His legacy includes major theological accommodations to/for secular Jews living in Palestine.
Kook authored, among other works (n Hebrew) Ayin Aiyah, Igorot HaRaiyah, Olat Raiyah, Orot, Orot HaKodesh, Orot Ha–teshuvah.
A corpus of translations exists, with many of the translations being by Samson and Fishman.
[Author’s note: Kook was uniquely extraordinary and extraordinarily unique.]
Rav Kook’s writings eventually gave birth to the Hardal Religious Zionist Movement.
His legacy institution, Mercaz HaRav, would tragically be the scene of a massacre in early March 2008 by an East Jerusalem Palestinian gunman, who infiltrated the premises, and then, the library, and gunned down eight students, with many other students wounded, most all in their teens.
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The compendium work Lights of Penitence, English translation and Introduction by Ben Zion Bokser, presents selections of Kook’s choicest writings.
In The Moral Principles, p. 135 of Lights of Penitence:
“The heart must be filled with love for all. The love of all creation comes first, then comes the love for all mankind, and then follows the love for the Jewish people.”
on p. 137:
“Though our love for people must be all–inclusive, embracing the wicked as well, this in no way blunts our hatred for evil itself; on the contrary it strengthens it. For it is not because of the dimension of evil clinging to a person that we include him in our love, but because of the good in him, which our love tells us is to be found everywhere. And since we detach the dimension of the good to love him for it, our hatred for evil becomes unblunted [sic] and absolute.”
The following lines appear in Lights of Penitence, under
Poems, pp. 379 and 380:
Expanses, expanses,
Expanses divine my soul craves.
Confine me not in cages,
Of substance or of spirit.
My soul soars the expanses of the heavens,
Walls of heart and walls of deed
Will not contain it.
Morality, logic, custom —
My soul soars above these,
I am bound to the world,
All creatures, all people are my friends,
Many parts of my soul
Are intertwined with them,
But how can I share with them my light?