Recently, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Eretz Yisrael, has returned to public discussion. Former MK Tehila Friedman, in a featured Times of Israel blog post, invoked Rabbi Kook in her call for the emergence of an inclusive, moderate religious Zionism. She was promptly rebuked by Prof. Allan Nadler, who declared that such a call was totally misguided: Rabbi Kook, in his opinion, was a conservative Haredi nationalist rabbi \u2013 the father of the current Israeli religious hard right. Other writers joined the debate, correcting some of Nadler\u2019s assertions.<\/p>\n
This, of course, is not the first time that controversy has emerged regarding Rabbi Kook. It has been a staple of scholarly and public discourse, especially in religious Zionist circles, since his death 90 years ago. The incessant return of this controversy, in one form or another, suggests that the categories used to describe this figure \u2013 liberal, conservative, Haredi, etc. \u2013 are somehow inadequate, that Rav Kook eludes description in these familiar terms. To get a grip on alternative, perhaps more adequate categories, we ought to note another characteristic of this figure \u2013 the fascination he evokes among religious liberals and among the \u201cHardalim\u201d (Israel\u2019s national-ultra-Orthodox population) alike.<\/p>\n
Ms. Friedman, chair of the liberal Neemanei Torah V\u2019Avoda movement, is clearly taken with Rav Kook. Prof. Yehudah Mirsky, author of an outstanding 2014 biography of Kook, and a Modern Orthodox Upper West Side Jewish liberal, recounted in a newspaper interview, how, as a 19-year-old yeshiva student, \u201che fell in love\u201d with this \u201cvital and empowering\u201d figure.<\/p>\n
Thus, Kook\u2019s religious Zionism is best conceived as a form of religious romantic nationalism with a capacity and tendency toward innovation \u2013 theological, institutional, and cultural (which may not be to everyone\u2019s liking.) The basic idea of expressivism, as formulated by such thinkers as Herder and Hegel, is that an idea achieves full clarify and articulation when it is expressed in a material medium \u2014 paint, letters, sound. At the same time, the author of the idea only fully apprehends and actualizes what she thinks and feels through such material expression. In line with this philosophical approach, according to Rav Kook, the ultimate aim of the Torah and Judaism is to embody the divine ideals in the material and mundane spheres of the nation, the state, and the national territory \u2013 and ultimately the entire material cosmos. Such a union of opposites (Ichud Hahaphachim) constitutes the Redemption (Geulah) and actualizes God\u2019s absolute perfection.<\/p>\n
Zionism, the settlement of the Land of Israel and the establishment of the Jewish state are, according to this religious Zionist view, all way-stations of the redemptive embodiment of divine ideals in their dialectical opposite, the material mundane world.<\/p>\n
The Jewish people, who participate in these processes and events clarifies its inner authentic will and intention to actualize the divine unity of the world and thus to return in some fashion to their ultimate source in God.<\/p>\n
The potential for innovation and creativity is very great as spiritual ideals, such as divine justice and holiness, become expressed and embodied in material and mundane activity, and as groups and individuals recover their true inner will and thoughts. Indeed, religious Zionism has vastly expanded the definition of religious and sacred activity so as to include settlement, agriculture, economic production, and defense and security work, and even the revival of the Hebrew language and cultural production.<\/p>\n
The seriousness with which religious Zionists take their religious duty to serve in the combat units of the IDF and contribute materially to Israel\u2019s security can be gauged from the extraordinarily high casualty rate they have sustained in the current war, far beyond their share of the population. At the same time, in recent decades their spiritually based engagement with art and culture has produced significant poetry, music, literature and cinema.<\/p>\n
What are the political implications of Rabbi Kook\u2019s rarified theology? Is Rav Kook the ideological source of the militant hard right with its emphasis on Eretz Yisrael, and on settlements even in Gaza and South Lebanon? Of course. The holistic world view of romantic religious Zionism, within which body and soul, mind and spirit, are integrated, lends itself to a way of thinking that is organic and that regards Eretz Yisrael as one entity which cannot be divided or exchanged. Is this militant territorial nationalism the only outcome that can be derived from Rav Kook\u2019s thought? Not at all. Some of Kook\u2019s closest associates such as Rabbi Yeshaya Shapira and the influential journalist Yehoshua Radler (Rabbi Binyamin), were members of Brit Shalom, the organization that in the 1930s sought reconciliation with the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine and a bi-national state. Radler, especially using the same holistic thinking, developed the notion of \u201cPan-Semitism\u201d which claimed that Jews and Arabs form one organic framework.<\/p>\n
Decades later, an important Religious Zionist figure, Rabbi Yehudah Amital of Yeshivat Har Etzion, also adopted a flexible political stance, based upon his understanding of the primacy of ethics in Rav Kook\u2019s thought. These ideas were revived in recent years by Rabbi Menachem Froman, who advocated reconciliation with the Palestinians on the basis of\u00a0sharing\u00a0<\/em>the Land, not dividing it.<\/p>\n Is Bezalel Smotrich\u2019s \u201cReligious Zionist\u201d party a true reflection of Rav Kook? Probably not. It lacks the openness, creativity and engagement with general Israeli society that characterized many of the first generation of Gush Emunim leadership, such as Hana Porat, Yisrael Harel, and Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun. It is that spirit together with the liberal religious Zionism of Tehila Friedman that is inclusive and constructive.<\/p>\n