Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Tikkun Olam
This is the second piece in a series sponsored by Tevel b’Tzedek that examines the concept of Tikkun Olam through conversations with some of the Jewish world’s best minds. The full videotaped conversation with Yehuda Mirsky, professor of Jewish Thought at Brandeis University and author of the acclaimed “Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution,” can be seen here.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) is one of the most fascinating — and most important — Jewish figures of the twentieth century. A Talmudic genius and kabbalist, who even his rabbinic opponents recognized as a uniquely gifted master of Torah, Rav Kook was a mystical visionary whose perspective was cosmic in scope and also a person deeply engaged in the world. Kook was the spiritual father of Religious Zionism and creator of the modern Chief Rabbinate, who answered complicated Halachic questions and helped impoverished and desperate people on a daily basis. Trained at the famed Volozhin Yeshiva, Rav Kook became a Zionist because, according to Professor Mirsky, he thought Judaism “Was in need of a good revolution.”