Abraham Isaac Kuk, born in Latvia in 1865, was Chief Rabbi of Palestine from 1921 to his death in Jerusalem in 1935. Rabbi Kuk was a man of contradictions, or rather paradoxes, who wrote treatises on complicated points of Jewish law, such as the proper laying on of the phylacteries, but also the most rhapsodic mysticalmoral exhortations and poems. The paradox, however, is no paradox; Rabbi Kuk, like the Cabalists by whom he was strongly influenced, saw the Jewish law, down to its minutest points, as a corpus mysticum alive with the spirit of God. This original Orthodox religious thinker, by now a legend in Israel, still remains a little-known figure to most Jews. In an earlier issue, Herbert Weiner told us something about Rabbi Kuk in his “Rav Kuk’s Path to Peace Within Israel” (March 1954); now Rabbi Weiner has translated some extracts from Rabbi Kuk’s writings which we offer below.—Ed.

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The Value of God-Denial

All names and titles, Hebrew or non-Hebrew, reveal but a small and dim spark of the hidden light toward which the soul really yearns and to which it calls out, “God.” Every definition of divinity leads to atheism; all definition is spiritual idolatry. Even the term “Divinity” (Elohut) itself, and the name “God” (Elohim), are definitions; and were it not for the higher knowledge that these are but as a glimmer of sparks emanating from something which is above all definition, then they, too, would involve us in atheism.

Man is repelled by the assumption of the insensitive that words and letters in themselves contain the divine essence, and “Goddenial” comes as a cry arising from the painful effort to lift and redeem man from this strange and narrow pit and raise him above the darkness of letters and formulae to the fuller light of the idea and the emotions, and to the dimension of ethics. Atheism has a provisional right to existence, for it must digest the impurities which attach to faith when true knowledge and worship of God are lacking. When this lack has existed for generations, then atheism articulates and embodies itself in a culture which would uproot everything that has to do with God, and all the institutions concerned with worship. But what sort of “uprooting” is truly intended by Divine Providence? It is the destruction of that dross which cuts man off from the true light of God, and it is upon the rubble heaps which are raised by the “denial of God” that the lofty knowledge of God shall build its Temple. Absolute “Goddenial” serves to purify the air of crassness and impurity and evil, and from that kind of thinking which is concerned with the “description” of the “Divinity,” the kind of inquiry that leads to idolatry. Not that the cure is better than the disease, but at least it opposes it directly, and out of the struggle of the opposing tendencies mankind is helped along to a brighter knowledge of God.

“‘The strong wind shall come from the four corners’ and it shall raise up in its strength those who are buried in the quaking graves of a sickly and ill-imagined conception of the divine reality, and ye shall see that I am the Lord, and that I will open your graves . . . and I shall bring you up out of your graves, my people, and bring you to the land of Israel.”

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Let the violent winds of “God-denial” purify all the refuse which has accumulated about the lower levels of the spirit of faith; in this way the Heaven shall be cleansed and the clear light of God that is the source of higher faith shall become visible.

The pure monotheistic faith has had mixed with it the darkness of corporealization and materialization. In every age this mixture is purified somewhat, and whenever a portion of the “corporealization” falls away it seems as if faith too were falling, but afterwards it ‘becomes apparent that faith did not fall—it was only purified. In these latter days we find falling away the veil of the last and most subtle type of corporealization—that materialization which identifies all of reality with the divine, whereas, in truth, everything that we define as reality is infinitely distinguished from Divinity.

There is an emptiness of thought, arising out of little study or knowledge, that leads man to think much about the “nature of God.” And the more he sinks into the emptiness of this foolish speculation, the more he believes himself to be approaching the higher knowledge of God, for he has heard that such speculation is the occupation of lofty spirits. Out of the accumulation of such habits of thinking through the generations, many vain notions arise whose results are evil. And the individual tends to lose his inspiration because of this lack of illumination. The greatest obstacles to the spirit of man arise when men’s thoughts about the Divinity are hardened into known and definite forms as a result of habit and immature speculation. . . .

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Appearance and Essence

They who seek only “inwardness” are dismayed when it seems that it is the superficial external that dominates life, but they ought rather to realize that only then does “inwardness” stand to gain a real victory. . . . For when it can be related to a stabilized and healthy society, where there are vigorous limbs and strong hearts, well-rounded emotions, aesthetic sensitivity, stable customs and patterns of life, a vitality and love of life in the world . . . then is it possible for “inwardness” to win mastery over a world that really has power and effectiveness.

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Prayer

To pray is the will and goal of all the cosmos.

All Being craves the Source of its life.

Every plant and bush; every grain of sand and clod of earth; everything in which life is revealed or hidden; the smallest and the biggest in creation—all longs, yearns, and reaches out toward its upper Source . . . toward that fullness from which delight flows . . . the Life, the Holy, the Pure, and the Mighty.

And at every moment, all these cravings are gathered up and absorbed by man, who is himself lifted up by the longing for holiness within him.

It is during prayer that all these pent-up desires and yearnings are released . . . and waves of light burst forth, rising freely in their strength and lifting the intonations of the holy word up to the very heights of God.

So Man, through his prayer, unites in himself all Being, and lifts all creation up to the fountainhead of blessing and life.

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Those Designated for the Mysteries

He who feels, after much trial, that the soul within him can find repose only when it is occupied with the mysteries of the Torah, he should know that for this has he been destined.

And may no obstacle in the world, fleshly or even spiritual, confuse and turn him from the pursuit of the fountain of his life, and his true fulfillment.

And it is well for him to know that it is not only his own self-fulfillment and salvation that wait upon the satisfaction of this tendency within him . . . the saving of society and the perfecting of the world also depend upon it. For a soul fulfilled helps to fulfill the world. True thoughts, when they flow without let in any one of the corners of life, bless all of life.

But should he abandon his search, and wander about seeking water from wells which are not really his, then though he draw water as much as the ocean, and take from streams in every part of the earth, yet will he not find peace. For like a bird who has wandered from his nest, so is the man who wanders from his place.

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Effect of Sin

Every sin brings about a particular type of trembling in the soul (which does not cease until repentance has been made) and as deep as is the repentance, in the same measure is the trembling itself turned into confidence and strength of heart. It is possible to detect this trembling which comes as a result of sin in the lines of the face, in movements, or in the voice, or in behavior, or handwriting, or style of language and speech, and especially the style of writing, in the setting forth of an arrangement of ideas. For in that place where the sin has walled off the light, there is the defect to be observed.

At the moment when a man sins, he is in the “world of division,” and then every detail stands by itself, evil is completely evil and it can work its harm. But when man repents out of love, there shines upon him the cosmic light of the “world of unity” where everything is joined in oneness, and in this general binding together there is no evil as such, for then evil joins with and accents the good and raises it to an even higher value.

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The Sage and the Prophet

Usually the poetic spirit inclines to a description of the general beauties of life, those spheres of life which are suffused with an abundance of life-dew. Poets are able to delineate and protest strongly against the over-all ugliness and defects of life. To probe, however, for inner and more minute causes; to ask how one can construct and establish life on a sound foundation, and avoid even that seemingly insignificant kind of corruption which leads to the large blemish and much damage—to all this, the strong and warm imagination is not attracted. These are matters for the wisdom of precision. Here we require the labor of the physician, the devotion of the meticulous, of those who measure and carefully judge. . . .

In an even more extreme way, prophecy was able to see the broad currents of corruption and idolatry in Israel and to protest against them vigorously. . . . But the small threads which twist together to form the thick strands of sin—the fine veins out of which are woven the great blood arteries—these are hidden from the gaze of the prophet and seer. All the very practical commandments, with their fine points and details; and how by observance and study, by habituation and through affection, in the course of time, their inner loveliness may be gradually revealed; and how the divine and pure lifestream coursing through them vigorously expels the darkness of idolatry, so that it does not again return; and how creeping indifference and inattention to the specific deed and its detail open the path to destruction, and destroy the vessels which can absorb the highest spirit, and how consequently the false urges of man’s heart, the misleading imagination which glitters on the surface but contains within itself only ashes and dust, how this swells—all this goes unobserved by prophecy, at least by that prophecy which is seen as through an unclear glass.

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It was indeed seen by the power of the prophecy of Moses—that revelation which was given from “mouth to mouth,” and which was revealed as “through a clear glass,” and which alone was able to see both the importance of the broad principle, and the fine structure of its detail. But there was no other like him, “and there did not again arise a prophet in Israel like Moses whom the Lord knew face to face,” and it was necessary to assign the work in the area of broad principles to the prophets, and the labor of the details to the sages.

And the sage is more important than the prophet. What prophecy, with all of its militant and fiery weapons, failed to do—to cleanse Israel of idolatry and to uproot the central manifestations of corruption, bribery and murder and lewdness—all this the sages did by extending the Torah and raising up many disciples, and by the repeated study of the big and little laws.

In time, the efforts of the sages overshadowed the word of the prophets and prophecy itself disappeared. As time passed, the “principles” began to weaken and to be so swallowed up in details that they were no longer visible. But it shall be in the latter days, when the return of the light of prophecy shall begin, that “I shall pour forth my spirit upon all flesh”—and then the contempt for the “minutiae” shall grow. The wisdom of the sages shall be despised and the “men of limitation,” the disciples of the wise Who carefully define their language, shall wander from city to city without pity—until not as unripe grapes but as fully ripened vintage filled with dew and life, the sparks of the beginning of the light of prophecy shall fly forth from their place of enclosure, and prophecy shall recognize the great accomplishment of the wisdom of the sages and it shall cry out strongly and in justice, “The sage is greater than the prophet.” . . .

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