ABSTRACT
If we were to look for a rabbi whose theological thinking most influenced Jews regarding which attitudes to the existence of the Jewish state they should adopt, there is no doubt that Rabbi Avraham Kook 1 would be in first place. And this is the case even in spite of the fact that he died in 1935, i.e. more than a decade before the formation of Israel. Rabbi Kook, known as the Ha-Raayah, 2 Ha-Rav Ashkenazi Ha-Rishon (‘The First Ashkenazi Rabbi’) or often just Ha-Rav (‘Rabbi’), is the spiritual father of the synthesis between Orthodox Judaism and modern secular Jewish nationalism (Zionism) or – in simpler terms – ‘religious Zionism’ (Avineri, 2001: 188). Rabbi Kook fused these two things in his teachings, which was an inconceivable combination in the Jewish world before then. An absolute majority of Orthodox rabbis of his time rejected Zionism as a heresy against God's will and did not support it. However, during his lifetime Rabbi Kook adopted theological views that were in many respects very different from those of his rabbinical contemporaries. In spite of this, however, he never stopped considering himself an Orthodox rabbi. Furthermore, he came from a completely Orthodox family, though it contained both Hasidic (on his mother's side) and non-Hasidic streams (his father studied at the famous Volozhin Yeshiva – ‘the mother of all Lithuanian yeshivas’).
