Zvi Yehuda Kook
Encyclopedia
Zvi Yehuda Kook was a rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

, leader of Religious Zionism
Religious Zionism
Religious Zionism is an ideology that combines Zionism and Jewish religious faith...

 (usually associated with the Chardal movement in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

) and Rosh Yeshiva
Rosh yeshiva
Rosh yeshiva, , , is the title given to the dean of a Talmudical academy . It is made up of the Hebrew words rosh — meaning head, and yeshiva — a school of religious Jewish education...

 of the Mercaz HaRav
Mercaz haRav
Mercaz HaRav , more properly, Mercaz HaRav Kook ), is a national-religious yeshiva in Jerusalem, Israel, founded in 1924 by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. It has become synonymous with his teachings....

 yeshiva
Yeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...

. He was the son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook
Abraham Isaac Kook
Abraham Isaac Kook was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine, the founder of the Religious Zionist Yeshiva Merkaz HaRav, Jewish thinker, Halachist, Kabbalist and a renowned Torah scholar...

, and named in honor of his maternal grandfather's brother, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Rabinowitch Teomim.

His teachings are partially responsible for the modern religious settlement movement in Judea and Samaria
Judea and Samaria
Judea and Samaria Area is the official Israeli term roughly corresponding to the territory usually known outside Israel as the West Bank and to the Israeli settlements there that are not governed as part of Jerusalem.-Terminology:...

. Many of his ideological followers in the Religious Zionist movement settled there.

Under the leadership of Kook, with its center in the yeshiva
Yeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...

 founded by his father, Jerusalem's Mercaz HaRav
Mercaz haRav
Mercaz HaRav , more properly, Mercaz HaRav Kook ), is a national-religious yeshiva in Jerusalem, Israel, founded in 1924 by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. It has become synonymous with his teachings....

, thousands of religious Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 campaigned actively against territorial compromise, and established numerous settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip
Gaza Strip
thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...

. Many of these settlements were subsequently granted official recognition by Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i governments, both right and left.

Biography

Rav Kook was born in Zaumel
Žeimelis
Žeimelis is a town in northern Lithuania, 40 km to the north from Pakruojis, near the border with Latvia. It is a centre of an elderate. A school first mentioned in 1596 . Field Marshal Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly was baptized in the Lutheran church on December 27, 1761. High school was...

 in the Kovno Governorate
Kovno Governorate
The Kovno Governorate or Government of Kovno was a governorate of the Russian Empire. Its capital was Kovno . It was formed on 18 December 1842 by tsar Nicholas I from the western part of the Vilna Governorate, and the order was carried out on 1 July 1843. It used to be a part of Northwestern Krai...

 of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 (now Žeimelis
Žeimelis
Žeimelis is a town in northern Lithuania, 40 km to the north from Pakruojis, near the border with Latvia. It is a centre of an elderate. A school first mentioned in 1596 . Field Marshal Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly was baptized in the Lutheran church on December 27, 1761. High school was...

 in Northern Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

), where his father was a rabbi. His mother is his father's second wife Reiza Rivka, niece of Eliyahu David Rabinovich-Teomim, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem along with Shmuel Salant
Shmuel Salant
Shmuel Salant served as the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem for almost 70years. He was a renowned Talmudist and Torah scholar.-Biography:...

. In 1896 his father with his entire family moved to Bauska
Bauska
Bauska is a town in Bauska municipality, in the Zemgale region of southern Latvia. The town is situated at the confluence of the rivers Mūsa and Mēmele where they form the Lielupe River...

, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

 to be the rabbi there.

In 1904 he moved to Jaffa
Jaffa
Jaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa was incorporated with Tel Aviv creating the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the biblical story of the prophet Jonah.-Etymology:...

 when his father was appointed Chief Rabbi of the city, then part of Ottoman-controlled Palestine. He studied Gemara under the guidance of Rabbi Reuven Gotfreud, the son-in-law of Rabbi Yoel Moshe Salomon, the founder of Petakh Tiqwa
Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva known as Em HaMoshavot , is a city in the Center District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv.According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2009, the city's population stood at 209,600. The population density is approximately...

, then under R. Moshe Zeidel and Benjamin Levin, however his main teacher remained his father throughout his life. In 1906 he went to one of the most prominent yeshivas in Jerusalem of that time Toras Chaim, in the future building of Ateret Kohanim. There he befriended R.Zerakh Epstein. His studies there did not last long. By 1910 he was already preoccupied with publication of his father's writings in Jaffa. There he published three of his books: Tzvi laTzadik, Shevet Haaretz and in 1913 Hatarbut haYisraelit(The Israeli Culture). One of his main collaborators in that activity was R.Yaakov Moshe Charlap, a future head of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva together with R. Zvi Yehuda.
Seeing his lack of time to truly study Torah as most of people his age, he decided to remove himself from public activity for some time. At first he went to Porat Yoseph
Porat Yosef Yeshiva
Porat Yosef Yeshiva is a leading Sephardic yeshiva in Jerusalem, Israel, with locations in both the Old City and the Geula neighborhood.-History:...

, the main Sephardic yeshiva of Jerusalem and then he left to Halberstadt
Halberstadt
Halberstadt is a town in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt and the capital of the district of Harz. It is located on the German Half-Timbered House Road and the Magdeburg–Thale railway....

, Germany and studied there in the local yeshiva. He also attended the local university philosophy lectures.

With the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 in 1914, he was arrested as a citizen of the Russian Empire, the enemy country, but was soon released and joined his father in Switzerland, where he was stuck due to the war. In 1920 he returned to the then British Palestine and began teaching at Netzakh Israel school. A year later, he went to Europe to attempt promotion of his father's new movement "Degel Yerushalayim" amongst the great rabbis of European.

In 1922 he married Chava Lea Hutner in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

. Chava Lea died childless in 1944, and R. Tzvi Yehuda remained a widower until his death nearly 40 years later. From 1923 he served as the administrative director of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, and then after R.kharlap died in 1952 he became Rosh Yeshiva until his own death. After the Six Day War in 1967 he induced the Israeli government to approve the building of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and sent his students to that mission. He tried to strengthen the Chief Rabbinate, which he saw as the beginning of the future Sanhedrin
Sanhedrin
The Sanhedrin was an assembly of twenty-three judges appointed in every city in the Biblical Land of Israel.The Great Sanhedrin was the supreme court of ancient Israel made of 71 members...

. He died in 1982.

Settlement movement

Prominent Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook was the leader of the now defunct settler movement, Gush Emunim
Gush Emunim
Gush Emunim was an Israeli messianic and political movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank. While not formally established as an organization until 1974 in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, Gush Emunim sprang out of the conquests of the Six-Day War in 1967, encouraging...

. Their beliefs are based heavily on the teachings of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda's father, Rabbi Abraham Kook. The two rabbis taught that secular Zionists, through their conquests of the Land of Israel
Land of Israel
The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...

 (Eretz Yisrael), had unwittingly brought about the beginning of the "final redemption", which would end in the coming of the Jewish messiah
Jewish Messiah
Messiah, ; mashiah, moshiah, mashiach, or moshiach, is a term used in the Hebrew Bible to describe priests and kings, who were traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil as described in Exodus 30:22-25...

. Gush Emunim supporters believe that building Jewish settlement
Jewish settlement
Jewish settlement may refer to :* Israeli settlement : Jewish communities currently established in the West Bank or in the Golan Heights, between 1967 and 2006 in the Gaza strip or between 1967 and 1981 in the Sinai....

 on land God has allotted to the Jewish people as outlined in the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...

, is an important step in the process of redemption. Like his father, Abraham Isaac Kook, Kook did not advocate aggressive conquest.

Emuna teaching

Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook didn't teach halakha
Halakha
Halakha — also transliterated Halocho , or Halacha — is the collective body of Jewish law, including biblical law and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions.Judaism classically draws no distinction in its laws between religious and ostensibly non-religious life; Jewish...

 and g'marah almost at all. The reason is not a lack of knowledge, as his books readily prove his halakhic genius. The reason is that he felt his target is to teach "emuna". Once a student asked him to teach a g'marah lesson and he refused, explaining that his life project is to teach emuna. His attitude to emuna is influenced by his father, Rabbi Abraham Kook.

In many yeshivot there is no study of emuna texts and if there is it is for a short time. In Yeshivat Mercaz haRav, where Rabbi Zvi Yehuda was the yeshiva's head many years, there are emuna lessons and the students devote around one hour a day learning emuna.

Rabbi Abraham Kook, the father of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda, wrote about the need of emuna study, especially in our generation, in numerous places in his books. A notable example is the essay titled Me'at Tzori in the book "Eder Haykar".

The attitude toward earlier Rabbinic authorities

Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda held the previous generations of rabbis in the highest regard. He used to quote the Talmudic proverb: "If the first generations are like angels, we are like people. And if the first generations are like people we are like donkeys". He explained that the meaning is this: if we see them like angels we are people, but if we see them like normal people, then we are like donkeys.

In his books there are references to many of the big rabbis of earlier generations. For example in the book "Mitoch Hatorah Hagoelet" he wrote that the first Rebbe of Chabad
Chabad
Chabad or Chabad-Lubavitch is a major branch of Hasidic Judaism.Chabad may also refer to:*Chabad-Strashelye, a defunct branch of the Chabad school of Hasidic Judaism*Chabad-Kapust or Kapust, a defunct branch of the Chabad school of Hasidic Judaism...

, the author of the Tanya
Tanya
The Tanya is an early work of Hasidic philosophy, by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad Hasidism, first published in 1797. Its formal title is Likkutei Amarim , but is more commonly known by its opening word, Tanya, which means "it was taught in a beraita"...

, was a "great man" but the Vilna Gaon
Vilna Gaon
Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman Kramer, known as the Vilna Gaon or Elijah of Vilna and simply by his Hebrew acronym Gra or Elijah Ben Solomon, , was a Talmudist, halachist, kabbalist, and the foremost leader of non-hasidic Jewry of the past few centuries...

 was even greater.

Students

The most well known among his students are rabbis Moshe Levinger
Moshe Levinger
Rabbi Moshe Levinger is an Israeli Religious Zionist who since 1967 has been a leading figure in the movement to settle Jews in the territories occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War...

, Shlomo Aviner
Shlomo Aviner
Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Ha-Cohain Aviner is the rosh yeshiva of the Ateret Yerushalayim yeshiva in Jerusalem and the rabbi of Bet El. He is considered one of the spiritual leaders of the Religious Zionist movement.-Background:Ha-Rav Shlomo Chaim Ha-Cohain Aviner was born in 5703 in German-occupied...

, Zvi Tau, Avihu Schwartz, Zalman Melamed, Dov Lior
Dov Lior
Dov Lior is an Israeli rabbi, who currently serves as the Chief Rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank. He is also the rosh yeshiva Kiryat Arba Hesder Yeshiva, and also heads the "Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria".-Biography:...

, Zephaniah Drori
Zephaniah Drori
Rabbi Zephaniah Drori is the Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Shmona, Israel and the rosh yeshiva of the Kiryat Shmona Hesder Yeshiva. He is the head of the Aguda LeHitnadvut and Av Beit Din of the northern conversion beit din....

, Issar Klonsky, Haim Steiner, Yoel Bin-Nun, David Samson, Moshe Ganz Nachum Romm, Haim Drukman
Haim Drukman
Haim Meir Drukman , born 15 November 1932) is an Israeli Orthodox Rabbi and former politician. Today he serves as Rosh Yeshiva of Ohr Etzion Yeshiva, the head of the Bnei Akiva Youth Movement and Center for Bnei Akiva Yeshivot.-Early life:...

 and Yaakov Ariel
Yaakov Ariel
Rabbi Yaakov Ariel is the chief rabbi of the city of Ramat Gan, Israel and one of the leading rabbis of the religious Zionist movement. Ariel had served as the rosh yeshiva of the yeshiva in the abandoned Israeli settlement of Yamit in the Sinai desert until 1982 and is currently the president of...

. Numerous Yeshivas in Israel claim to be following his teachings.

Books

Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook didn't write any books but he wrote articles and letters which are printed in a book format. Additionally, there are books of his lectures.

Articles books: "Or Lenetivati", "Lenetivot Israel", two volumes.

Letters books: "Tzemach Tzvi", "Dodi Litzvi", and some of his letters printed in the book "Igrot HaRaaya".

Lectures book: "Sichot Harav Tzvi Yehuda" in torah (5 volumes), Mesilat Yesharim, Moadim (festivals) etc. by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner
Shlomo Aviner
Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Ha-Cohain Aviner is the rosh yeshiva of the Ateret Yerushalayim yeshiva in Jerusalem and the rabbi of Bet El. He is considered one of the spiritual leaders of the Religious Zionist movement.-Background:Ha-Rav Shlomo Chaim Ha-Cohain Aviner was born in 5703 in German-occupied...

.

External links

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