Abraham Isaac Kuk, Chief Rabbi of Palestine from 1921 until his death in 1935, has some of the proportions of a legendary figure, but his passage into legend has had the effect of obscuring much of his actual teaching and personal quality. Yet just at this time, when newspapers daily report fresh manifestations of the religious strife which has disturbed the State of Israel since its establishment—and which has recently erupted into excited demonstrations in the United States—it may be that the voice of this by now somewhat remote mystic leader of Orthodoxy can offer the aptest and most practical commentary on the day’s news. Herbert Weiner, on a recent visit to Israel, attempted through personal contact with Rav Kuk’s son, Zvi Yehudah Kuk, to find his way to the teachings of Rav Kuk and the tradition which his son carries on.
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“Son of man,” wrote Abraham Isaac Kuk in one of his rhapsodic bursts of prose, “let not names, words, phrases, and letters swallow your soul. They are in your power, and you are not in theirs. Lift upwards, rise! Fierce power is yours. You have wings of spirit, the wings of mighty eagles. . . .” But Rabbi Kuk was Chief Rabbi of Palestine from 1921 to his death in 1935, and so spent much of his life preoccupied with words, phrases, and letters, and more than that with the smallest minutiae of ritual law.
There were other paradoxes. Rabbi Kuk was raised in the ascetic world of the great Yeshivas of Russia and Lithuania. But continually he preached to his own students: “We will not increase the spirituality of our generation except through the enlargement of its fleshly qualities.”
In his poems he cried out, “Expanses . . . expanses . . . enclose me not in cages of matter or mind.” Yet one of his earliest publications, which he personally circulated in the towns and villages of his native Russia, was an exhortation to his brethren to be more careful about placing their head-phylactery on the precise area of the forehead prescribed by law. Strangest of all, this man, held by many the greatest and most original religious thinker of our generation, is little known in Jewish circles and completely unknown to the non-Jewish world. Early settlers in Israel remember him, to be sure, and many of the anecdotes of his life have become part of Israeli folklore. But few even in Orthodox circles are more than scantily acquainted with his thought and teaching.
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Reading the writings of this extraordinary personality, I had found myself increasingly impressed with the striking relevance of his ideas to the present religious problems of Israel. So while in Jerusalem this past summer, I determined to look up Zvi Yehudah Kuk, the only son of Ha-Rav, “The Rabbi,” as the father is now known.
I was told that Zvi Yehudah could be found at the Yeshiva, “The Center of the Rav,” which his father had founded, situated in a street now named after him.
The approach to the Yeshiva is through a courtyard, past an eye clinic which occupies the first floor, and up some stairs in the back. Though the stone courtyard and stairs are well scrubbed, the air is slightly tinged with the odors from the poor sewage system of that section. A long corridor runs the length of the second floor, leading at one end to the Yeshiva proper, which consists of a large classroom and a small chapel. Toward the center of the corridor is an office and then some rooms which are occupied by the family of Rav Kuk’s daughter and her husband, who is today the acting head of the Yeshiva.
The Yeshiva seemed deserted as I entered. I glanced into the main room and saw two students—hats pushed back on their heads and engrossed in conversation. In the small office, a bearded man, evidently the secretary or administrator, greeted me in a friendly fashion, saying that Zvi Yehudah Kuk would soon return. He offered me an English pamphlet to read, which described the program and hopes of the “Center of the Rav,” and appealed for funds.
After a while I rose and went into the large classroom, where the two young men glanced at me with polite curiosity and continued their conversation. On the wall near the window was a picture of Rav Kuk taken when he was Chief Rabbi, his black beard streaked with gray, and a large fur hat on his head. Directly below the picture a quotation from the Ethics of the Fathers was framed: “Be ye of the disciples of Aaron, loving and pursuing peace, loving mankind, and drawing them close to the Torah.” On the other side of the window was a picture of a man wearing a medieval-style Arabic turban. It was a portrait of Maimonides, and it was somewhat surprising to find the picture of that great legal authority and rationalist in this Yeshiva, Rav Kuk being, I had considered, far closer in spirit to the poetic and mystic philosophy of Judah Halevi. In a way, though, the medieval physician and philosopher did express Rav Kuk’s hopes for his own Yeshiva. Though he asked his students to set aside time for the study of the minutiae of the animal sacrifices which would have to be offered by the priests when the Temple should be rebuilt, he also urged that the curriculum of his Yeshiva include secular and scientific studies. “For how,” he wrote, “can a teacher communicate with and improve his people unless he be acquainted with the ideas that set the style of the generation?” Above all, Kuk constantly insisted that only when Judaism was made fertile by true genius of mind and heart, could it reveal its full light to the world. This thought of combining great minds with Torah remained with him, literally to the end of his life. On the very day of his death, Dr. Zondek of the Hebrew University visited him. When he had finished his examination, the people standing around the bed heard Rav Kuk whisper to the distinguished but not particularly religious scientist, “May the day come when the great of the Jews will also be Jewishly great.”
I was looking at the picture on the wall when the secretary came in to tell me that Rabbi Kuk had arrived, and I could see him in his office. Zvi Yehudah Kuk is quite different in appearance from his father. His eyes are small and twinkling, and a short white beard covers his rather fair skin. He took my hand in warm greeting, and asked how he could help me. I said something about being interested in learning more about Ha-Rav, his personality and ideas. Smiling, he nodded his head in eager assent: “Yes, he was unusual. He combined all levels together . . . the mystic and the legal; deep poetical feelings with clear logic and practical judgment . . . all together.”
He agreed readily to set aside some hours for discussion of his father’s teachings. Taking me by the arm, he walked with me into the corridor and out to the stairway. There, still holding my hand, he inquired as to my first name and my work, and invited me to visit him the coming Sabbath at home.
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That Saturday afternoon, making sure I had a yarmelke in my pocket, I set out for the “Vineyard of Abraham” quarter of Jerusalem, where Zvi Yehudah Kuk lives. “The son of Rav Kuk”—this is what everybody calls him. I decided to add a question, if the mood permitted, about how it felt to go through life known mainly as the “son of” somebody else. Before such questions, however, the obvious topic to discuss was the present religious crisis in Israel.
As I walked along the streets toward the Orthodox quarter of the city, the symptoms of the crisis were evident. The walls of the buildings were plastered with large posters, signed by the Orthodox “Council of Elders.” In the bright Jerusalem sunlight, the large, black letters of the posters seemed to project a shadow on the faces of the Sabbath strollers, who gathered about to read them. The posters warned of the plot of the “ungodly” to pass a national conscription bill, an “evil edict” which was going to separate the pious and chaste daughters of Israel from their families and subject them to the “brothel-like” physical examinations and atmosphere of the army. The language was sharp, even salacious in its implication. The men and women who paused to read the posters made no comment. Only occasionally a person would turn away with a half shake of the head and a bitter contraction of the lips.
As I crossed Herzl Street and entered into the more Orthodox quarter, the posters were more plentiful. Here the men stopping before them were dressed in the long coat-jackets and broad-brimmed hats worn by many of the Orthodox in Israel. This area of town was quieter, for the taxis bustling about in other streets would not take the chance of driving here: too many had been overturned on the Sabbath. But it was a tense sort of quiet.
Not far from the corner of Herzl Street, a young boy, his fists clenched, stood a few feet away from his bicycle, which had either fallen or been snatched from him. Around him, at a safe distance, six or seven younger children, wearing their Sabbath hats and long jackets, looked angrily at the owner of the bicycle, who was daring them to come closer. Across the street a young man had noticed the commotion and was approaching the group. He was dressed like the younger boys, but kept his jacket around his shoulders, the sleeves flapping by his side.
“Get away from here,” he said as he came to the boy with the bicycle, who stood his ground and retorted only with a sharp and ugly Arabic curse. The young man came closer, and repeated grimly, “I asked you to get away from here quickly.” The boy hesitated, then, looking around at the group, spat his curse at them again, picked up his bicycle, and rode away. The passers-by resumed their Sabbath stroll.
As I turned the corner of the street of the “Hundred Gates,” in the heart of the Orthodox quarter, I took the yarmelke out of my pocket and put it on my head. Suddenly I heard the loud sound of a motorcycle. All stopped in their paths, and turned around to see what was happening.
Down the hill rode a tanned young man, his shirt open at the collar, smiling gleefully at the calls of “Shabbos! Shabbos!” ringing out about him. In the seat behind him was a girl, obviously disturbed at her boy-before’s bravado. The motorcycle traveled swiftly and was out of range before the stónes which had been picked up by passers-by could be thrown.
These scenes were an appropriate prelude to my meeting with Zvi Yehudah Kuk, for it was to this problem—the religious schisms of Israel—that his father had dedicated most of his life and thought.
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Zvi Yehudah Kuk lived on the first floor of a small building in the quiet “Vineyard of Abraham” quarter of Jerusalem. When I knocked at the door, the landlady answered and told me that Rabbi Kuk was still at the Yeshiva. She showed me into his room, which was refreshingly cool, the hot summer sun having been kept out of it by closed shutters. As the woman turned to leave, I asked whether the Rabbi lived here alone. “Yes,” she replied, “since his wife died he lives here alone.” She added: “His wife was a wonderful person, and they were very, very happy together. Unfortunately they had no children. He has been living here with my husband and myself many years.” At the door she stopped again. “He is really a tsaddik . . . a saintly person . . . kind and humble. He’ll be in soon. Do make yourself comfortable.”
On one side of the room there were shelves with books and manuscripts, and on the opposite wall was a full-length photograph of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kuk, dressed in the fur hat and long jacket which the Orthodox Jews of Eastern Europe have worn for centuries, and which they still wear, even in the semi-tropical climate of Israel. It was not difficult to associate this picture of the bearded Orthodox rabbi in fur hat with some of the stories told of Rav Kuk.
So pious had he been as a youth, I remembered it was told, that at times he returned from walks with his face bleeding from scratches. When asked where they came from, he had confessed that they were self-inflicted, and that he had wanted to cause himself pain while passing women in the street, so as to drive “strange thoughts” from his mind.
A comrade of that time recalls that once on Tisha B’av, while reading the Lamentations of Jeremiah, young Abraham Isaac Kuk’s tears had dropped so profusely that his friend couldn’t help saying, “Look, I too love Israel, and bewail its destruction . . . but why do you seem to feel it all so much more deeply?”
“You don’t understand,” the young man had replied, “you are not a Kohen—a. priest—as I am.” Kuk never forgot that as a descendant of the priests he possessed special responsibilities for maintaining holiness in the land of Israel.
In those days he was known among his fellow students and teachers as the “squint-eyed genius,” because of the peculiar set of his eyes. I looked more closely at the large, dark eyes in the photograph, for those who knew him in his lifetime always remarked about their glow and their quality of seeming to look into distances: “Expanses . . . my soul craves expanses.”
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When Zvi Yehudah Kuk entered, he took my hand and greeted me warmly by my first name. Then, urging me to sit down, he hurried into the kitchen, returning in a moment with two cups of water and a bowl of grapes. After offering me the grapes, he sat down at the table beside me, and quietly moved his lips in a benediction before drinking from his cup of water.
“Well, how shall we begin?” he said. “Shall we read from my father’s writings?” He motioned to the shelves. “You know, most of his writings are still unpublished.”
I began to suggest a question, but he interrupted, and placing his hand on mine said, “You know, if you will be more comfortable, you don’t have to wear the yarmelke here.”
Perhaps I should not have been surprised by this remark from a man whose father had often been criticized by his Orthodox brethren for joining the “freethinking Halutzim” in dancing the Hora. Yet the invitation to remove my yarmelke did seem strange coming from an Orthodox rabbi, who not only wore a skullcap himself, but whose fringed undergarment peeked through his shirt in complete fulfillment of the Biblical commandment, “And thou shalt look upon them.” Smiling a bit at my surprise, Rabbi Kuk explained, “You see, I don’t want any mechitza—any artificial boundaries—between us. I want us to be really close, and I want you to feel natural, and it seems to me you are not really accustomed to wearing a yarmelke.“ I muttered something about being quite comfortable in one, and even wearing it in my own home on occasion. But Rabbi Kuk patted my hand reassuringly: “It’s all right. We will get to know each other better, and you won’t feel so strained.”
Flustered, yet encouraged by his warm, personal tone, I decided suddenly to put aside the general questions about religion in Israel, and raise the more intimate ones. I found difficulty in conveying my thought to Rabbi Kuk. What I wanted to know about his father was . . . had he really succeeded in feeling in his own life that harmony and peace of soul and mind which he claimed could exist along with that “restlessness which arises from the never-ceasing expansion of the soul”? And had he really reconciled the fleshly with the spiritual? And what of the other conflicts which must have existed in the actual life of one who, as Chief Rabbi, was so deeply involved in the petty details and political wranglings of community life? Were these not burdensome to a spirit which yearned for “boundless heights”? And what about his personal life? So often the family life of a community leader is impoverished because of his outside activities. How was it in their home? I was somewhat abashed at the boldness of my own questions, and Zvi Yehudah Kuk also seemed surprised at the turn of the interview, but his eyes retained their good humor.
“We have so little time that we should really talk about his teachings, and some of your questions can best be answered if we understand my father’s way of thinking.”
He hesitated, then decided to answer. “As to my personal memories of him . . . of course, he was always overburdened with the needs of the community. Everything came to him. A call from the High Commissioner asking his intervention in keeping the Jews from blowing the shofar at the Wailing Wall, or someone asking for help in getting a visa. And everything he liked to do personally. Even when he was sick the last months of his life, I can remember his running through the streets to the consulate to arrange some papers for somebody . . . the water bottles, which he carried to relieve his pain, flapping about his body as he hurried. He always wanted to do things with his own hands.”
He pointed to the shelves filled with manuscripts. “He even refused help in the simple copying from other books required for his legal writing. He called it his ‘black work.’ If others could build roads and sweep streets, then he wanted to do some ‘black work.’ Still, despite all his activities, he tried his best to save time for study with me. And in the home I can only remember his face gentle and good toward everybody and on all occasions.”
He glanced at the picture of his father. In the photograph there was a serene half-smile about Rav Kuk’s lips, but the dark eyes seemed more sad than smiling. Rav Kuk had spoken much of the joy to be found in holiness, but he had also written so eloquently about that “melancholy pressing on his heart, saddening and embittering his life without conscious explanation.” He had tried to explain it. It was the result, he wrote, of the “struggle of the soul, caged in its physical bonds and reaching out for a life of freedom . . . a life finer, clearer, and brighter . . . yet failing to attain it . . . and this struggle is the cause of the melancholy of the soul.”
“And since this is its 6/23/2008,” he wrote, “why, then, one should take advantage of this mood of the soul, lift pearls out of murky depths, and distill from this melancholy exquisite emotions. For, after all, in whatever manner and wherever a man’s soul makes itself evident, there is evidence of the beginning of deliverance; the light of salvation pushing to reveal itself from behind the blackness.”
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But had Abraham Isaac Kuk really been able to “lift pearls out of murky depths”? True, there were many stories told of his saintly capacity to “sweeten and justify the harsh judgments,” even in his personal life. When he was suffering from cancer in the last months of his life, he was seized with a spell of pain while trying to study with some friends. After the pain had softened, he turned to his friends and said, “Man does not know how grateful he should be to his Creator for that suffering which is able to cleanse his sins. Blessed be the Merciful One who for seventy years of my life has not deprived me of His goodness. Praise be to God whose goodness is forever.”
But these were stories of the type often repeated about a religious leader after his death. Had Rav Kuk really succeeded in feeling the “light of salvation pushing to reveal itself from behind the blackness”? Such matters only a very close friend—or a son—could reveal, and I tried to explain again to Zvi Yehudah Kuk what I was after. He listened to me closely, his eyes still twinkling a bit, and nodded his head encouragingly. When I had finished, he placed his hand on mine and said, “Yes, there were conflicts. But he was always able to lift his soul above them.”
I must have looked a bit unhappy at his answer, for he added as if eager to please, “But of course there were a few times that I can recall when he was provoked and did lose his composure . . . but those were very few.”
He went to the bookcase and leafed through the pages of a book he had edited, containing his father’s many letters. “Look,” he said, “maybe I can show you something interesting,” and he turned to a letter written to somebody who had evidently accused Rav Kuk of shirking his “obligation” in not reviewing a book which had been sent him. Rav Kuk had answered him, and Zvi Yehudah Kuk read a sentence aloud from the letter. “I am obligated to no man, but only to God alone.” He looked to see if this satisfied me, explaining, “Of course he was not quite right. He was a community servant, and was obligated to man.” He continued to turn the leaves of the book as if looking for some further revelation of his father’s weaker moments, and finally found a letter written to himself. He read it aloud. In this letter, Rav Kuk complained to his son about the multitude of petty community tasks which robbed him of time for study and for other important matters. But even this bit of “wickedness” was dulled by the observation in the same letter that “after all, one cannot know how great in importance are even the seemingly small things.”
“This was his way,” Zvi Yehudah Kuk explained, “to see always the great principle and possibility, even in the smallest detail, and the detail in the principle. As for the conflict between his poetic talents and his interest in legal detail, you may have heard how he once put it: ‘Even as there are laws of poetry, so there is a poetry in law.’
“Actually, there were times when my father did act and speak with irritation, but mostly it was calculated sharpness, to achieve a certain end, as when he ignored a government official—you must have heard about that.”
I confessed that I hadn’t, and he told me how, one day in 1929, a British government official had ordered the small Jewish community of Hebron to surrender its arms and how, a few days later, they had been attacked by Arabs, and most of the community killed. Shortly thereafter, the government official and the Chief Rabbi had attended the same function. The official extended his hand as the Chief Rabbi passed him on the platform, but Rav Kuk ignored him, explaining later that he could not touch the hand which, in the phrase of Isaiah, was “stretched forth but covered with blood.”
“But as to the uncalculated moments of irritation or sharpness,” Zvi Yehudah concluded, “they were very few.”
“Even when he was being attacked by people of his own Orthodox community?” I pressed.
“Yes, even then. He was able, always, to achieve an elevation of the soul. To ‘lift the soul’—this was the technique he always used in approaching all the problems of life. To go ‘up to the roots,’ to ‘see things from above.’ This was always his ability, and the secret of his strength.”
Quite discouraged by now at this picture of unalloyed saintliness, I was about to ask just how “going up to the roots” could help solve the very concrete and sharp-edged religious and political problems of modern Israel, but the hour was late, and I decided to save this question for another meeting.
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The next few days I spent away from Jerusalem, visiting in the immigration camps and outlying settlements. The Cabalistic advice to “go up to the roots” seemed more and more inadequate to the realistic problems which were threatening the very survival of the new state. As dangerous as the Arab threats and the export-import imbalance, was the political, cultural, and religious fragmentation of the little country; the distrust and antagonism between Israel No. 1 and Israel No. 2, as they half facetiously called themselves; the complaint of “veteran settlers” that the dreamland of Herzl and Ahad Ha’am was becoming but another trivial Levantine state; the lack of communication and understanding between Western and Oriental Jew, and between the various groups of Oriental Jews themselves; the continuing and sharpening religious strife between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox communities over the problems of religion and state. All pointed up Israel’s pressing need for some inner quality of nationhood that could rise above present fragmentation. This was the problem I had hoped to hear something about from the son of Rav Kuk. After all, it was to this problem of bringing the “diverse” together that Rav Kuk had devoted most of his life and thought.
Indeed, he had achieved some success. To the “freethinking” nationalists he had always spoken of the dangers arising from a Jewish nationalism which, if separated from its “soul,” would become only another group “selfism,” and eventually lose the very source of its inspiration. And to his Orthodox brethren, outraged by the contempt of the native-born “sabra” for holy traditions, he offered another explanation. True, he admitted, there was an overemphasis in modern Israel on the achievements of bone and muscle, and there was an aggressive callousness—“chutzpah,” he called it—toward those whose labors were in the world of prayer and Torah. But, he insisted, it was the “chutzpah“ of the Messiah, for we had lost, in our exile among the nations, those “gross animal” qualities of life which must be part of the being of every healthy people. We had, so to speak, become “over-etherealized” and had neglected the “coarser” dimensions of existence which the holy must also possess if it is ever to attain real power in the world. “The vessels must be thickened before they can be proper receptacles for the highest and the most intense illuminations.”
True, the increase of chutzpah—the brazenness that could bring a man to find pleasure in riding his motorcycle through the Orthodox quarters on the 6/23/2008—this indeed hurt. Yet was it not the necessary swinging of the pendulum back from too much and too narrow a holiness, perhaps, to the other extreme of too much fleshliness? In any case, it was a temporary excess, and eventually the holy would receive its due. “Not, however, in quarrelsome or impudent manner, but by so growing in strength that the ‘unholy’ would bow beneath it, enter into it, and the coarser elements would be completely transmuted and holiness would be eventually fuller and greater than before.”
Rav Kuk did not become the Chief Rabbi of Palestine until 1921. But long before then, as the Rabbi of Jaffa, he had become a figure beloved by “religious” and “freethinkers” alike. The Orthodox liked to tell of their Rabbi whose prayer was so intense that once, before the evening service, he was seen to leave the synagogue suddenly and engage the gardener outside in conversation about trivial matters. He explained later that the fervor of his heart was at that moment too intense for containment in the words of the prayer book. In order to cool his ardor, he had chatted a while with the gardener.
On their side, the “freethinkers” liked to repeat what the Rav often used to say in answering the Orthodox who criticized him for excessive tolerance toward “non-believers.” “There is a place for distinction between pure and unpure, and holy and unholy,” Kuk would say to them. “In the Temple there was a Holy of Holies, into which only one man, the High Priest, could enter, and that only at one time of the year, on Yom Kippur. But,” he reminded his listeners, “what was the situation when the Holy of Holies was being built? Was it then built only by the High Priest, or even by the priests? Did not the ordinary carpenters and the hewers of stone also enter freely and contribute their offering to the total structure? We are building today, and we have not yet completed our ‘Holy of Holies.’ All . . . all have a portion to offer in this building, and none more right than another in bringing their offering.”
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The non-religious also liked to remind the Orthodox of how their beloved Chief Rabbi had suffered calumny and persecution from extremists in his own camp. There were, indeed, religious fanatics who had accused the pious rabbi of heterodoxy. In 1909, while in Jaffa, Rav Kuk found himself in the midst of a trying controversy with Orthodox colleagues, both in and outside of Israel. With the settlement of Jews in Israel, a law that had once been but discussion material for the Yeshiva suddenly became a real problem. According to Biblical proscription, land owned by Jews in Israel must lie fallow every seventh year, the shmitta year. This year arrived in the Jewish calendar, and with it the problem. Rav Kuk did not sidestep the difficulty of reconciling life with Torah. He found some rabbinic authorities who agreed that in the “hour of urgent necessity” it was permissible to work the land by a legal fiction—that is, by a fictitious selling of the land to a non-Jew for the year. Kuk decided to follow these authorities. It was apparent to him that if the shmitta were enforced, there would be no future possibility of receiving investment capital for Palestine. The newly planted settlement would be unable to survive. He ruled, therefore, that the shmitta year could be circumvented. His decision was attacked by a number of leading rabbis, but Rav Kuk stood his ground.
Not that Rav Kuk ever surrendered one jot or tittle of the law. Rather, he claimed, Orthodoxy was not revealing its fullest dimensions to the world. In a letter to a critic, he outlined his attitude: “We have abandoned the soul of Torah. Orthodoxy is occupied with negative quarreling, and concerns itself with vain delusions which are destroyed by the realities of life. Nor should we take comfort in the thought that the atheistic elements of our population will likely be the first to meet destruction. Such trouble is not ‘half comfort’ but double trouble. The proper way is open before us. All the Torah, with all its spiritual connotations should be known to us. If only a portion of our talented people, who know Torah and are blessed with good minds, would volunteer to try to reveal the pure ideas of our faith, to clarify our theology, the meaning of our Prophets, the depths of our divine spirit . . . our great ideas and clear thoughts so worthy of being the life foundations of many peoples . . . we could then begin that great heavenly work of clearing the contaminated spirit from off the earth, and of making a beginning of the establishment of the Kingdom of God.
“But some, because of darkness of heart, and smallness of faith, and others, because of pride and lack of information, still think that the smaller type of Torah, narrow and dry, which did not have the power to resist the depredations of other cultures and antagonistic spiritual forces, will still, today, be our source of healing. Do not accuse me, my dear friend, and I hope no man will accuse me, of smallness of love, God forbid, for the practical aspects of Torah, or of lack of enthusiasm in study and expansion of this practical Torah. . . . But at a time like this, when the possibility of the destruction of the higher Torah is at hand . . . when someone does come along and say that our help can be found in the soul of Torah . . . the critics complain and object: ‘What do you want . . . mysticism, ethics, science, philosophy, sermonics, poetry . . . didn’t all of these things once deceive us?’
“Complaints like this are enough to choke the voice of God within us crying ‘Seek me and ye shall live.’ . . .”
And Rav Kuk concluded his letter with a postscript, “As regards that rumor you mentioned . . . I have not seen the book, but in no way is there any place for strife between lovers of truth like ourselves.”
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Of course, the majority of Israel’s citizens today do not see the religious difficulties of the land in terms of Torah, whether limited or expanded. Many are upset by the decision of the coalition government to place intimate matters of marriage and divorce completely in the hands of the Orthodox rabbinate, in return for a promise on the part of some members of the Religious Bloc to vote for the national conscription bill. They are embittered and frustrated by what they feel is a lack of leadership and courage on the part of the official Chief Rabbinate.
I was determined, in my next visit to Rabbi Kuk, not to let him escape a discussion of these concrete problems with advice about “going up to the roots” or “lifting the soul.”
Upon returning to Jerusalem, I came directly to the Yeshiva to look for Rabbi Kuk, and was told that he would be present for the evening prayers. The services were held in the small synagogue of the Yeshiva. Very few students were about, and the prayers were offered quickly, in an atmosphere quite similar to many of the dozens of similar synagogues in the area. The story of Rav Kuk stepping out of the synagogue because his desire to pray was too intense passed through my mind. I wondered again if I was mistaken in feeling that Zvi Yehudah Kuk was somewhat lonely in his own Yeshiva. I didn’t see him in the congregation, but after the prayers noticed him standing in back near the door. He greeted me in his usual warm and eager manner, took me aside, and asked how I had found things in traveling about the country. Though I did not want to provoke a full discussion then, I did tell him how much I had been depressed by my trip.
“Yes,” he said quietly, lowering his face, “we do need a bit more love and faith in Israel today.”
The next day I went to see him at his home. I began our discussion with a story, probably apocryphal, about an American who had visited a so-called “freethinking” kibbutz and engaged a member of the settlement in a conversation about religious matters. After some preliminaries, the American rabbi had come out and asked the settler, “But aren’t you at all religious?” The settler looked at him in surprise, and said, “Of course not.” The visitor had pressed further. “But don’t you have any belief in God, or any convictions about the possibility of a spiritual contact between man and the mystery of life?” The kibbutznik appeared surprised, for he had been expressing strong positive convictions on these very questions. “Why, of course I believe in God . . . but what has God got to do with religion?”
Zvi Yehudah Kuk smiled at the story. “Sometimes I think,” he said, “that what we need in Israel is more belief for the ‘believers’ and more ‘freedom’ for the ‘freethinkers.’ The Orthodox, the ‘believers,’ need more faith in the power of a God who evidently has a place in His pattern for all types of Jews, and they must stop worrying about whether their own type of holiness is being copied by others, and have faith that their God, who has preserved Israel and brought the people again to its land, has His designs and purposes. As for the ‘freethinkers,’ they should be more free in their thought, free enough to break through the little political and economic formulas by which they define their lives and the world, to press beyond the limitations of ideological catchwords and glimpse the mysteries and vistas which are not encompassed by small definitions. Our difficulty is that in both camps we have smallness of mind and littleness of heart. Yes, more belief for the believers, and more freedom of thought for the ‘freethinkers,’ and above all, love, a bit more love.” He had been talking with a half-smile, but now he became serious.
“Our Orthodox Jews say that they observe the Commandments. And they do carefully observe the commandment to hate those who desecrate the law. But there is a commandment greater than all of these: the commandment to love. To love one’s neighbor, even if he doesn’t agree with you, and this, the greatest of all commandments, they neglect.”
He paused as if wondering whether to continue the thought. “Of course, our world does not always recognize the full meaning of love. People associate love with sentimental feelings alone. But love includes much more. The act of love should bring all levels of the human being into play, his intuitions, his emotions, and his logic and mind as well. You know that in the Cabala the attribute of ‘lovingkindness’ is identified with chochma—wisdom. Love really is a chochma, a total wisdom. And like any other ‘wisdom’ it requires study and analysis and thought, and it cannot be left to depend on a bit of emotion or sentiment alone.
“You asked what my father would have said at this time about the religious controversies in our country. He believed in the oneness of all Israel, and in the holiness of all its parts. And he always urged one section of the people to recognize the spark of holiness which exists even on the other side. The non-religious must realize, even if they don’t agree, that the Orthodox are upholding a heritage and values which do possess holiness, and for this they must be treated with respect and consideration. And the Orthodox must remember that all of Israel, even non-religious Israel, has sparks of holiness, and must not be treated with contempt or read out of the Jewish people. They must remember that although their own religious institutions are holy, our religion declares that the institutions of the Jewish state, by virtue of the fact that they are instruments of a Jewish land, and a Jewish people, also possess a certain sanctity, and must not be slandered. It is in this spirit of seeing ‘from the roots,’ from above, the oneness of Israel, that all discussions should be held and all decisions made.”
He spoke rapidly and with an eager intensity. When he finally released his grip on my hand, it was almost time for the evening prayers. “But we should spend more time on my father’s basic teachings,” he said. “Have you read The Lights of Repentance? This book really contains his fundamental ideas. He not only recommended it to others, but would set aside periods of time to study it himself every year before the High Holy Days.”
Then, looking at the sun beginning to set outside, he rose and put on his neat black coat. As we went out together, I asked him if he could sum up himself the major characteristics of his father’s thought. We walked along, and he considered the question.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I think that the secret of my father’s thought was his power of ‘inclusion,’ of being able always to see what seemed to be isolated events and fragments of reality as included within a larger whole. He was able to see not only the branches but also the roots and the tree as a whole.”
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Abraham Isaac Kuk, though involved all his life with the “dry and practical” areas of Jewish law, was attracted from the depths of his soul to the Cabala, the Jewish mystical writings. He was himself a mystic and tried again and again to convey in rhapsodic outpourings of prose and poetry the intuitive flashes of harmony and joy which he personally experienced. But he realized that the knowledge of the mystic could be conveyed to others only by the use of visual imagery, and he often presented his ideas in that Cabalistic terminology of “the tree and the root” to which his son so often referred.
Man’s visible life, his thoughts, deeds, and physical appearance, are likened to the trunk and branches of a tree. It is, so to speak, an upside-down tree whose visible exterior is on earth, but whose invisible roots come from heaven. In terms of this image, the concepts of good and evil, wisdom and sin, receive their meaning.
It is necessary for the branch or leaf of a tree to maintain its connection with the root. Should it sever or even narrow its channels to that root source, it would be emptied of life-giving content and ultimately wither and die. Sin is such an act of “cutting off” or narrowing of communication between branch and root, between part and whole, and its result is pain and destruction. To avoid such destruction, individuals must realize themselves to be not independent entities, but branches connected to a larger totality—a people or a nation—through which connection they can best draw from the root source of life. And these larger social groupings, too, should feel themselves to be branches on the tree of humanity.
Sometimes when the “connections” are broken or warped, more than self-destruction takes place. The power which is in the root runs amuck, as if the force coming from the heart of the universe, which should have been used to bring together man and God, neighbor and neighbor, nation with nation, as if all this energy, unable to flow into proper channels, runs wild and moves the individual parts to unreasonable acts of destruction upon others as well as themselves.
It is the purpose of the Torah to see that such “cutting” of connections does not take place. The purpose of the commandments or mitzvot of the Torah is to give us a pattern of thought and action which can widen, rather than narrow, the channels of communication between individual and group, and between man and his root source of life. The goal of the Torah, and, indeed, of religion, is therefore to achieve a greater and more abundant flow of life for man and his world from the Source of Life.
Since, then, the good deed or mitzvah is a source of fuller life, and since sin is essentially an emptying of life content, it requires only “wisdom” to bring us to the right path—the wisdom which perceives that all the seemingly separate parts of creation are bound together in unity, that all men and nations share an ultimate identity of fate and well-being, and no fragment of the whole—no party, no ideology, no single incident or fact—should be seen in isolation, but always “lifted to the roots” and comprehended within its larger meaning. To the degree that one achieves such wisdom or chochma, one develops one’s capacity for faith and love: faith is really the understanding that all isolated events in time and space are necessary and ultimately good when seen from the total perspective, and love—that is, respect and consideration and feeling for the other—comes when we are conscious of our basic identification with that other.
In the book Lights of Repentance, and in other writings of Rav Kuk, these thoughts are poetically phrased and infused by the spirit of a man who, in his own personality and life, seems to have achieved the wisdom and power often to “ascend to the roots.”
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But there was one afternoon when the shaded room and Rabbi Kuk’s gentle voice were not enough to lift us above the violent tensions of life. It was the day that I came upon a demonstration of Orthodox women, several hundred in number, before the Knesset. Crowding up to the doors of the Knesset, the women insisted on interrupting the session to protest the national conscription bill which, they shouted, would separate pious daughters from their families, their faith, and their chastity. The organized demonstration soon degenerated into bedlam. The hats of the distraught guards were flung from their heads by the women, and the streets resounded with screams of “Nazi!” “Murderer!” “Shoot us! Why don’t you shoot us?”
The crowd which had gathered on the sidewalks looked on with mixed emotions of amusement and disgust. But one little man moved into the midst of the women and shouted: “Nazis, you say! If they were Nazis they would take guns and mow you down like this”—and he held his arms in front of him in imitation of a machine gun. “What right have you got here? Why didn’t you bring it with you?” His voice rose even above the shrieking of the women, “Why didn’t you bring your white flag with you?”
The women directly in front of him were taken aback by his shouting and one of them burst into tears, crying, “But we are good Jews! We keep the Sabbath and Holidays and the laws of Moses. . . . We are good Jews!”
Both the women and the onlookers knew what “white flag” the man was referring to. During the war of liberation, an extreme segment of the Orthodox community had raised the white flag of surrender over its section of town, and had informed the Arab leadership that they were perfectly willing to surrender, and even preferred Arab rule to the sovereignty of an atheistic Jewish government. This was the same group which later sent a letter to the Pope asking his intervention against the authorities of the Jewish state. It was obvious that the man was articulating the bitterness of many others who were grimly watching the demonstration. In their minds were angry memories of the war period: the edict of the Chief Rabbi, exempting all rabbinical students from war service; the young men who came bearing certificates of their Orthodoxy from bearded uncles or cousins, but who lost their “faith” as soon as the war was over. Watching from the street were fathers and mothers whose children had been killed or crippled by a war whose “holiness” was not sufficient, in the eyes of the rabbis, to distract yeshiva students from their studies. Now their children were again guarding the borders, policing the streets, running electric plants and hospitals on the Sabbath, and doing those tasks which the Orthodox considered a “desecration of the Name,” but the benefits of which they did not refuse.
The man continued shouting about the “white flag” until the police managed to push the women back from the entrance. When a space had been cleared, an Orthodox member of the Knesset came out and stood quietly looking over the scene. The cigar in his hand seemed to fit, rather than contrast, with his well-fed and well-clad body, and his luxurious black beard. Despite the “Orthodox” cut of his clothes there was something about him more redolent of back-room political caucuses than of the Chambers of Torah. After calmly watching the progress of the demonstration with obvious satisfaction, he slowly turned and walked back to the Knesset. The demonstration went on until the fire trucks turned their hoses on the women. Then, they quickly re-formed their ranks and marched to the house of the Chief Rabbi to continue their protest.
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I had come upon the scene on my way to Rabbi Kuk’s; I described the affair to him, evidently conveying the bitterness I had shared with the onlookers at the behavior of the women and the bearded representative of the Knesset, who had probably arranged the demonstration; for even as I spoke, I saw the distress in Rabbi Kuk’s face. But I was wrong to identify him with those demonstrators. He was alone, and so, too, must his father have been. An Orthodox Jew, alienated from the “freethinkers” who made so light of what was sacred to him, but alienated also from the Orthodox community, whose spirit has been so largely absorbed into small-visioned legalism and politics, leaving little over for the many in Israel who thirst for spirit and religiosity. Perhaps no person is more alone in Israel today than the genuine religious traditionalist, who desires the “full Torah of heart and soul.”
Rabbi Kuk bent his head and said quietly, “Yes, we do have smallness of mind and heart. We know so well the laws of milk and meat, but the laws of community life, of respect for the institutions and instruments of the community . . . these laws we have forgotten.” He placed his hand on mine, “My father, whose memory is a blessing, used to be criticized because he extended his hand to non-religious kibbutzniks. They told him that one who desecrated the Torah was not worthy of his friendship, but he would say to them, ‘Better that I should risk the sin of “causeless love” than that of “causeless hate.”’”
His voice became stronger, and he looked directly at me. “It is true that things are bad with us now, and they will yet grow worse. There is corruption in the land, and a lowering of morale. There is hatred between groups and an ugliness of behavior all about. This is the last chapter of two thousand years of exile and degradation, and all the economic, political, and religious subjugation, yes, all the words and all the blows that have ever been dealt us, now their wounds are showing.”
He spoke rapidly, and his eyes were bright. “These are the difficulties, yes. But these are also the very proof and sign of the great moment now unfolding itself here. Israel is like a laboratory in which is taking place the greatest synthesis and climax of our history. Peoples who have been separated from each other by two thousand years, different in language, color of skin, tastes in food, are suddenly being molded together into oneness. And even as in the laboratory when there is a synthesis of diverse elements, it is accomplished by noise, so here, too, we have our boiling and fury and storm. But all of this—it is the very proof of this great and unique moment of the ingathering and of the re-creation of the Jewish Tree of Life.” His voice was quiet, but tense with effort as if he was trying to lift us both “to the upper roots.”
But the ugliness of the demonstration I had just witnessed persisted in my mind. Wasn’t there, I asked him, a danger in this advice always to “lift above”? Didn’t it tend to make too distant the very real and immediate problems of right and wrong? Could not one “lift” oneself away from the responsibility of taking definite sides in the issues of the day?
He leaned forward, eager for me to understand. “But specific decisions and strategy can be even better clarified from the upper roots. One must make specific judgments, but they should be made from the viewpoint, not of the individual section or political party, but from the level where the whole is seen. The detail is not less important or less clear because you see it as part of the whole. On the contrary, it is more important precisely because it manifests the whole. My father was able to make decisions on a very practical and logical level.”
Feeling that the point was not yet clear, he went on: “Look . . . in this room there are light and dark objects. If we let the outside light in, then the gradations of light and dark here will change. What seems light now may, in contrast to the light outside, be dark, but the objects we saw before—they are not more blurred, but are made clearer by letting in the brighter light from outside.”
I persisted, thinking still how easy it was to be philosophical in his shaded room: “If we are always trying to see our concrete problems from a higher Tight, revealing the faultiness of our own judgments, then perhaps our struggles and distinctions of good and evil aren’t worth the effort.”
He was silent as if forming his thought, and then spoke slowly. “It may be, indeed, that there are different levels of truth in the universe. What is light in this room now may certainly be dark as compared to the brilliant sunlight outside. Even our distinctions between good and evil, or life and death, may be inadequate from a point of view which encompasses more than our limited approach to reality. But why couldn’t our universe, by design, have different standards of truth operating on different levels? And we must work only on our level, and with the limited world and vision given to us.”
We were again in the “hidden” world of “lights and trees,” so different from the concrete world of violence that had manifested itself in Jerusalem that morning. But perhaps Rav Kuk was right in claiming that our activities in the “revealed world” would be clearer and wiser if they were influenced by wisdom and light of the “hidden world.” Perhaps that vague atmosphere termed “causeless love,” and the vision of a historic destiny, inclusive of all the diverse political and religious groupings of the Jewish people—perhaps these seemingly abstract ideas and moods were needed to achieve both wiser and more practical judgments even on matters like the national conscription bill. Perhaps, as the Cabala claims, our troubles do derive from “separations”—from separation of man from man, of flesh from spirit, of the outer life of activity from the inner life of ideas, or of the practical decisions of everyday life from the invisible mood of “causeless love.”
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When the time came for me to leave Jerusalem and Zvi Yehudah Kuk, I brought along a movie camera. All partings, the Sages say, are like a sixtieth part of death, and I hoped my films would somewhat minimize this fraction. Our talks together had come to mean much in a very personal way, for his eagerness “not to allow any boundaries” had taken our relationship beyond the formal.
He looked at the movie apparatus on my shoulder as I entered the room, but said nothing. I told him I was leaving that afternoon, and we spoke for a while about Jews coming to and leaving the Holy Land. His father, of course, had firmly believed that all Jews should return to the land of their historic birth, and I asked him if he also felt that way. He chose his words delicately, conscious of the fact that I was leaving.
“There is, I think, a special connection between this land and Jews. They do fit each other. After all, this is the cradle. Here the Jewish soul was created. I really think,” he smiled gently, “that even the light, the climate, the shape of the hills, particularly fit the soul of the Jew and bring the highest out of it.”
“But,” I said, “what about the five million Jews in America? Don’t you think they also have a special destiny and role in Jewish history?”
“Of course, of course,” he said quickly. “But though you live in a wonderful and free country, isn’t there, Jewishly, a type of ‘slavery’? Not, of course, of the body, but a twisting of mind and spirit, no matter how slight. For instance, when you try to think through problems about the Jewish people or Jewish ideas, don’t you even subconsciously strive for conclusions which make your relationship with non-Jews more comfortable? Don’t you avoid certain conclusions, even if they be true? But you certainly have important work there,” he added, as if unwilling to push the point. “Tell me about your own work.”
I tried to describe the work of a rabbi in the United States. He was particularly interested in the description of services in a liberal synagogue. He asked what prayers the Reform group omitted or changed, and nodded his read encouragingly as I answered.
“But I see,” he interrupted me gently, “that you haven’t taken off your own yarmelke. I am afraid I haven’t been able to remove entirely the mechitza—the boundary between us. I am really sorry.” His eyes were smiling, but I was still at a loss for an answer, and mumbled the Talmudic injunction about “respecting the sensitivity of others.” For the first time I saw a flicker of irritation pass over his face. “No, no, that is exactly what I do not want, for you to be something not natural to yourself out of deference to me. Why should we have to think that we must always stamp our image upon others?”
He spoke with deep feeling, and then, dropping the subject abruptly, rose from the table and went to the shelves on which his father’s manuscripts were stacked. “We should really spend our little time studying a bit.” He looked through some manuscripts. “My father, blessed be his memory, didn’t organize his writings. He always envied those who had a talent for putting their creativity in order, but still he felt that such creativity was secondary. Primary creativity is like the lightning flash.”
He brought a few manuscripts to the table. “He wrote and wrote. He would take up his pen whenever he had a moment, and everything—poems, legal observations, philosophy, commentaries on the prayers—he wrote swiftly, and would rarely rewrite or cross out.” He showed me a page of manuscript in the fine handwriting of his father, and read aloud, “There are times when I feel low and worthless, but then I think of the divine soul within me, and I am raised. . . .”
Rabbi Kuk’s eyes twinkled, “You see, he even wrote personal confessions.”
I interrupted to ask if he himself had not written something we could read this last hour. He seemed surprised, but pleased, and took down a magazine from the bookshelf. It contained one of his own pieces and we began to read it together. It was finely written, and the ideas were stimulating and well worked out.
I could not resist the question which had been with me ever since meeting the son of Abraham Isaac Kuk. So often the children of great men break from their father’s path in order to assert their own talents. Did Zvi Yehudah Kuk not feel any resentment at being known as “the son of Rav Kuk”? His eyes lit up in amusement. “I would really be satisfied to consider myself a continuation of my father. Of course,” he smiled playfully, “his style, some say, was a bit too poetic and vague, and I try to make my writings clearer. But he is the source, I am only the continuation.” Then he became serious. “The truth is that Ha-Rav was one of the truly gigantic personalities of all generations. There are great minds who specialize in this or that talent, but only rarely does someone rise above and synthesize them all. Rav Kuk had such a ‘primary source mind.’ It drew from an elemental creative power which ex pressed its genius on different levels and through diverse talents.”
The time had come for parting, and Zvi Yehudah Kuk took my arm and accompanied me through the door and onto the sidewalk. Hesitatingly I stopped and asked him if he would mind being photographed. He patted my arm and said, “But it isn’t necessary.”
“Well,” I persisted awkwardly, “just to remember everything better.”
He grasped my hand. “We will remember each other in better ways.”
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