Bezalel Naor, “Rav Kook and Emmanuel Levinas on the “Non-Existence” of God, ” Richard Sugarman, “Questioning Levinas,” Asher Don Rabinowitz, “The Medical Aspects of Zara’at,” R. Shelomo Zalman of Kopyst, “The Curtains of the Tabernacle,” Eliyahu Zini, “A Rift in the Unity? / The Relation of Torah to the Sciences,” Shlomo Katz, “Rahav and Yehosua / Imagination and Intellect,” Shabtai Teicher, “On the Two Stages of Redemption,” Joshua Hoffman, “Rav Kook’s Mission to America,” Bezalel Naor, “Rav Kook’s Role in the Rebirth of Aggadah,” Rav A.Y. HaKohen Kook, “The Lion in the Cage” (Poem), Rivkah Hannah Beila Einhorn (Roberta Chester), “Isaac Luria” (Poem). 120 pp.
Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook served as the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Erets Israel from 1921 until his death in 1935. Born in Grieva, Latvia in 1865, he studied in the famed Volozhin Yeshivah, dubbed “the mother of yeshivot.” Beside the intellectual tradition of Volozhin, reaching back to the Vilna Gaon, Rav Kook was exposed in early childhood through his mother’s family to the mystical legacy of Habad Hasidism.
“Inyanah shel ha-Hasidut” (“The Matter of Hasidism”)
by Rabbi Bezalel Naor
In this groundbreaking essay, the author presents Beshtian or East European Hasidism as an attempt to reintroduce the charismatic or prophetic dimension to Jewish life. The optic is very much that of Rav Kook, although the author’s perspective is also influenced by the historiography of Rav Kook’s fellow kabbalist, Rabbi Pinhas Hakohen Lintop of Birzh, Lithuania. The reader will also note some common ground shared with Rabbi Kalonymos Kalmish Shapira of Piaseczna (known as the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto). The departure point for the entire discussion is a pithy remark by Rabbi Shelomo Zalman Schneerson, Rebbe of Kopyst, at the Simhat Beit ha-Sho’evah, Sukkot of 1890. (Rav Kook’s maternal grandfather was a Kopyster Hasid.)
The endnotes contain fascinating discussions:
Did Hasidism intend prophecy for the masses?
How the Vilna Gaon democratized ru’ah ha-kodesh (divine inspiration).
What was the mystical practice of the Ba‘al Shem Tov?
The clairvoyance of the Mezritcher Maggid.
Hasidism, Romanticism and the Enlightenment.
Rabbi Isaac Hutner’s allusion to the Letters of Rav Kook.
Clarification of Maimonides’ position on Prophecy and Halakhah.
The relation of the Kotzker Rebbe to the Vilna Gaon.