R. Kook: A This-Worldly Mystic

doi:10.1017/9781108233705.009

9 - R. Kook: A This-Worldly Mystic

from Part III - Modern

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2020

Tamar Ross

Edited by

Steven Kepnes

Show author details

Steven Kepnes: Affiliation:
Colgate University, New York

Book contents

Get access

Summary

R. Kook is best-known today for his paradoxical embrace of secular Zionism as a covert harbinger and embodiment of the traditional messianic dream. Despite its considerable influence on the trajectory of modern Israeli politics, the practical conclusions that have (rightly or wrongly) been distilled from this understanding of the nature of contemporary Jewish nationalism are increasingly challenged by a more complicated political reality.Other more radical implications of this blurring of theological boundaries, however, which have their roots in modern offshoots of classical Kabbala and parallel tropes of German idealism, bear notions that are surprisingly relevant to more fluid and humanist notions of religious belief in a post-Kantian age. These bear the potential for revising our understanding of the concept of God and of the grounding of religious dogma at large.

Keywords

worldly mysticism R. Kook Jewish theology

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology , pp. 185 - 212

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108233705.009 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Selected Further Reading

Agus, Jacob. Banner of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Abraham Isaac Kook. New York: Bloch Publishing, 1946.Google Scholar

Ben-Shlomo, Yosef. Poetry of Being: Lectures on the Philosophy of Rabbi Kook. Tel Aviv: Mod Books, 1990.Google Scholar

Bokser, Ben Zion, editor and translator. Abraham Isaac Kook – The Lights of Penitence, the Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems. New York, Ramsey, NJ, Toronto: Paulist Press, 1978.Google Scholar

Bokser, Ben Zion, editor and translator. The Essential Writings of Abraham Isaac Kook. Teaneck: Amity House, 1988.Google Scholar

Feldman, Tzvi, editor and translator. Rav A. Y. Kook – Selected Letters. Ma-aleh Adumim: Ma’aliot Publications of Yeshivat Birkat Moshe, 1986.Google Scholar

Gellman, Jerome I. The Fear, the Trembling, and the Fire – Kierkegaard and Hasidic Masters on the Binding of Isaac, chapter 5: The Passion. Lanham, MD, London, NewYork: University Press of America, 1994,Google Scholar

Mirsky, Yehudah. Mystic in a Time of Revolution. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2014.Google Scholar

Rappoport, Jason. “Rabbi Kook and Nietzsche – a Preliminary Comparison of their Ideas on Religions, Christianity, Buddhism and Atheism.” The Torah u-Madda Journal 12 (2004): 99–129.Google Scholar

Rosenak, Avinoam. “Hidden Diaries and New Discoveries: The Life and Thought of Rabbi A. I. Kook.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 25.3 (Spring 2007): 111–47.Google Scholar

Ross, Tamar. “Between Metaphysical and Liberal Pluralism: A Reappraisal of R. A. I. Kook’s Espousal of Toleration.” AJS Review 21.1 (Spring 1996): 61–110.Google Scholar

Ross, Tamar. “The Cognitive Value of Religious Truth Claims: Rabbi A. I. Kook and Postmodernism.” In Hazon Nahum: Jubilee Volume in Honor of Norman Lamm, 479–527. Edited by Elman, Yaakov and Gurock, Jeffrey S.. New York: Michael Sharf Publication Trust of the Yeshiva University Press, 1997.Google Scholar

Ross, Tamar. “Immortality, Law, and Human Perception.” In Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Jewish Spirituality, 237–53. Edited by Lawrence, J. Kaplan and Shatz, David, New York: NYU Press, 1994.Google Scholar

Shalom, Benjamin Ish. Rav Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook – Between Rationalism and Mysticism. Translated by Ora Wisking-Elper. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.Google Scholar

Schwartz, Ari Ze-ev, ed. The Spiritual Revolution of Rav Kook: The Writings of a Jewish Mystic. Translated by Ari Ze’ev Schwartz. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2018.Google Scholar

Yaron, Zvi. The Philosophy of Rabbi Kook. Translated by Avner Tamschoff. Jerusalem: Eliner Library, 1991.Google Scholar