Photo Credit: Jewish Press
The influx of Jews to Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century did not alarm just the Arabs, but also the very pious Jews already living in Israel who formed âthe Old
Yishuv.â To them these new arrivals seemed ultra-secular â even blasphemous.
The man who hoped to bridge the gap between the new arrivals and the veteran settlers was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, known universally as Rav Kook. Born in 1865, he moved to Palestine in 1904 and served as the rabbi of the Jaffa community. Rav Kook was ordained by Rabbi Yechiel Michel Halevi Epstein, the