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Allan Nadler
Retired Rabbi, Emeritus Professor of Jewish Studies, Drew University

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook: Father of militant messianic Zionism

The figurehead of religious Zionism is portrayed as open and tolerant but he was anything but liberal, religiously or politically.

To mark the advent of 2025, The Times of Israel collated the 10 most significant blog articles it published in 2024 (Special: Blog Posts that Told Our Story in 2024 (January 2nd, 2025). Among these exceptional opinion pieces was Tehila Friedman’s acutely compelling article, Four questions for religious Zionists, and the answers that can save Israel (Times of Israel Blogs, August 20th, 2024). In it, the former Blue and White party MK – who currently runs the liberal religious Zionist Ne’emanei Torah ve-Avoda organization – warns that the fate of the Jewish State might very well be determined by the future direction taken by the rabbis and political leaders of Israel’s religious Zionist sector, that she accurately depicts as having strayed far from the vision of the founders of Religious Zionism towards a dangerous, militant and apocalyptic, hard-right Jewish Nationalism.

Friedman’s responses to the four questions alluded to in the piece’s title are predicated on her alarm at the deep divide now separating the politically pragmatic, religiously moderate, tolerant and humanistic Religious Zionism that characterized the Mizrachi movement founded in 1902 by Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines and today’s radically messianic, hawkish and racist party that calls itself Religious Zionism (she might well have added Ben Gvir’s equally loathsome Otzma!).

Friedman’s proposals to avert the looming and catastrophic collapse of the classical Zionist ideal of Israel as an essentially Jewish and fully democratic state are compelling. If only her introduction of the two rabbinical giants of Religious Zionist history — from the moderate Mizrachi’s inception in 1902 through to the 1973 Yom Kippur War that sparked the rapid ascendancy of the militant, far-right nationalism, fused with Haredi, not Modern, Orthodoxy peddled widely in Israel by the settler movement, Gush Emunim — were more accurate!

Had Friedman’s distorted presentation of Religious Zionism’s earliest leading lights been merely problematic from an academic perspective, it would not detract much from her central argument. However, that is not the case, and her flawed presentation only weakens her argument.

Rabbi Abraham I. Kook, 15 April 1924 (WikiCommons)

Unfortunately, she follows her ominously apt warning of the catastrophe that looms for Israel should religious Zionism continue to choose the path of militant majoritarianism and messianic madness with a naively deluded depiction of the revered first chief rabbi of modern Palestine as “the Leading Light of Religious Zionism” and hence a model of moderation, tolerance, and harmony between Orthodox and secular Jews. She goes on to suggest that Kook’s teaching should inspire today’s Religious Zionists to choose the path of liberal religion and politics over the extremism of the currently dominant Hardalim (an acronym for HaRdali Dati Le’umi, or Ultra-Orthodox Religious Nationalists). This group has sadly determined the current State of Religious Zionism.

This romantic and sanitized image of Rav Kook as any model, let alone a leading light for the few remnant champions of politically liberal and universalist Religious Zionism, is more than just misguided; it is, more broadly, dangerous for Israel’s survival as a decent and democratic nation. Though Friedman later acknowledges that it was the Mizrachi’s founder, Rabbi Isaac’s pragmatic political Zionism (which resulted in his very close collaboration with and deep admiration for Theodore Herzl, whom Kook loathed), she errs in describing him as a Haredi rabbi, which could hardly be farther from the truth.

Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines (1839-1915) (PD/Wikimedia)

Reading Friedman’s article triggered long-held grievances about the calamitous abandonment of the founding principles of Religious Zionism, established by Rabbi Reines and two generations of his now almost entirely vanished disciples – Mizrachi luminaries including MKs and cabinet members such as Yosef Burg, Rabbi Judah Leib Maimon and Yitzchak Raphael. It called to mind the historical divisions between these pragmatic political Religious Zionists who historically allied themselves with Herzl’s school and formed coalitions with Israel’s primarily secular prime ministers, beginning with Ben Gurion, from the state’s founding until the demise by the early 1980s of those politically pragmatic and religiously moderate leaders of Mizrachi and especially Ha-Poel ha-Mizrachi, who were faithful to the historically left-leaning labor wing of Religious Zionism. The young Turks who began then to displace them espoused a militant, muscular messianic Zionism inspired not by the Reines school but by its Haredi-Zionist rabbinical opponents, most notably Abraham Kook and his son, Zvi Yehudah, who carried and spread his messy and militant ideology.

Israeli soldiers restrain Jewish settlers after they stormed the Palestinian West Bank village of Dayr Sharaf following a terror attack in which an Israeli driver was shot dead, November 2, 2023. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP)

Contrary to Friedman’s account, Rav Kook, père, was not a founder but a lifelong opponent of classical Mizrachist Religious Zionism. However, it would be churlish to blame her for getting this vitally important distinction between Kook and Reines so utterly wrong. For far too long, this has been a regnant – but as romantic as it is fallacious — a vision of the elder Rav Kook’s approach. Even the most respected historians of Zionism and academic authorities on Rav Kook’s life and thought have been complicit in the by-now almost total obfuscation of profound opposition to Mizrachi from its founding until his death in 1934. This calls for a serious reevaluation of Kook’s legacy.

Setting the record straight about the essential distinctions between Reines’s and Kook’s Zionist visions is hardly a mere academic desideratum! This widespread, fuzzy and feelgood, but mistaken, fusion of the respective ideologies of these two great rabbinical luminaries has by now become treacherous in that it has led Modern Orthodox Zionists in Israel to revere Kook in much the same manner as their American counterparts (appropriately) revere Rabbi Joseph B. Solveitchik, who was indeed a classical Reinesian Zionist and the leading sage of the diasporic Mizrachi-Hapoel ha-Mizrachi Organization, for it handicaps those who are so alarmed by the rapid political rise of the messianic zealotry of the Hardalim and who almost desperately hope for a resurrection of classic Religious Zionism. The second of Friedman’s four questions upon whose resolution the very survival of Israel may depend demands what she elegantly calls “a decision between a fundamentalist zeal for Messiah and a pragmatic yearning for Messiah.”

Today’s Hardalim widely revere Rav Abraham Kook as the saintly rebbe of their ultra-Orthodox, hyper-nationalist messianic zeal. And rightly so! Rav Reines and his followers consistently rejected not only the explosive fusion of messianic idealism with the Zionist dream but any attempt to harmonize Zionism with the tenets of Judaism. Kook’s vision prevailed due in no small part to his reputation as a saintly mystic who knows the will of God, despite his vast body of writings consisting of his hopelessly unsystematic ruminations that have attracted even though his ideas came to him in heavenly flashes, which explains his literary oeuvre being notoriously self-contradictory, inspired as he was by the Hasidic mystical ideal of Ichud ha-Hafachim (the harmonization of opposites) as opposed to coherent, to say nothing of rational, thinking; in sharp contrast to Reines, who was a painstakingly meticulous writer, and classically Litvak, which is to say a rationally systematic thinker inspired by a long line of rigorous philosophers and rabbinic theologians from Maimonides to the Vilna Gaon.

Alas, as is generally all too common, the charismatic, mystical visionary always attracts far more admirers than the more “boring” soberly rational theologian. Hence, Reines’s ideology required a strict separation between Judaism, the religion and Modern Jewish Nationalism, which became so thoroughly obscured by Kook’s messy, messianic and deeply intolerant counter-vision. A coherent and compelling revival of Reines’s Religious Zionism demands a very difficult and painful repudiation of Rav Kook since he has become a kind of patron saint for the entire spectrum of religious Zionists. It will necessitate a critical reassessment of Rav Kook’s true legacy, which is a vast undertaking.

So let us consider only two issues—aside from his messianism—that separate classical Religious Zionism from that inspired by Rav Kook: women’s rights and education. Contrary to widespread misconceptions echoed by Friedman, Rav Kook was never a classical Religious Zionist. He was instead a vehement and outspoken opponent of the political Zionism of Herzl and his Mizrachi partners from the inception of the Mizrachi movement, which he not only never joined but against which he polemicized, beginning with a series of articles in the notoriously anti-Zionist Haredi paper Ha-Peles.

Rav Kook was anything but liberal, neither religiously nor politically. Throughout his life, Kook advocated for stringently retrograde laws on these two key issues from his day to our times. Ironically, his first issue – the public status and rights of women – has been central to the ideals of the Neemani Torah va-Avodah organization that Friedman currently leads. Kook consistently opposed the advancement of women, not only in terms of public policy but also in terms of educational policy. He was an outspoken opponent not only of gender-mixed classes in any (not only the religious) schools of the New Yishuv. Moreover, he notoriously ruled halachically and polemicized publicly against universal suffrage, to say nothing of allowing women any public or political leadership roles.

The romantic image of Rav Kook as an open and tolerant leader whose legacy has been tarnished by the fanatical messianic Zionism of his son and the latter’s disciples is as understandable as it is misguided. Kook’s deceptively tolerant and inclusive embrace of secular kibbutzniks (as well as his related – and among the Haredim notorious — dispensation to farm the land during the Sabbatical year has aptly been characterized by Dov Schwartz, the most prolific scholar of Rav Kook’s theology, as “messianic paternalism.”

Kook’s messianism, combined with his disdain for the modern, pragmatic politics of Mizrachi, led to a schism between two opposing parties: Mizrachi and Degel ha-Torah, the failed opposition movement he founded, whose platform denounced just about every political attainment of Reines’s pragmatic Religious Zionism. Anyone who has studied the agenda of this party will be struck by how similar its ideals were to those of Zvi Yehudah, which have been inculcated in generations of his disciples: critically, its goal of imposing halachic observance on the entire Yishuv and future state, as well as its deliberate obliviousness to any practical political considerations.

As for educational philosophy, one need only contrast the respective curricula of the truly pathbreaking, first modernizing Orthodox Yeshiva founded in Lida by Reines and that of the yeshiva established by Kook in Jerusalem, which today bears his name (Yeshivat Merkaz Harav Kook). The Lida Yeshiva pioneered the fusion of Talmudic and secular studies – resulting in its condemnation by almost all the Haredi rabbis of his time, thus serving as the inspiration and model for both New York’s Yeshiva University and Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, whereas Yeshivat Merkaz Harav has never let subjects like foreign languages and world history – to say nothing of dangerous disciplines like philosophy – pollute its Beit Midrash.

The de-Kookization of Religious Zionism would be so deeply troubling, even traumatic, a process that it may very probably be impossible. However, the effort will not be in vain, even if it convinces only a few rabbis and leaders of contemporary Religious Zionism. In the immortal prophecy of Reines’ lifelong collaborator and good friend, “If you will it, it is not a fantasy.”

About the Author
Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies and Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at Drew University (ret.). Prior to his appointment at Drew in 1998, Dr. Nadler was the Director of Research at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City, and Dean of YIVO’s Graduate Training Program, the Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies (1991-1998). From 1991-94 Dr. Nadler was Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. In 1994-95 he served as Adjunct Professor at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. In 1998 he was the Ezra Sensibar Visiting Professor at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies in Chicago. In 2005-2006, and again in 2012, Dr. Nadler was Professor of Jewish Studies at McGill University in Montreal, where he had previously been a fully time faculty member from 1982-1984, and an adjunct professor from 1984-1990. In 2011, Nadler was the Norman and Gerry Sue Arnold Distinguished Visiting Chair in Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston, in Charleston, South Carolina. An Orthodox-ordained rabbi, Dr. Nadler served the Charles River Park Synagogue in Boston and Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Westmount (Montreal), Canada(1982-1991). Dr. Nadler’s hundreds of articles, essays, op. eds. and literary reviews have appeared in numerous scholarly and popular journals and newspapers such as Commentary, The New Republic, The Jewish Review of Books, Tablet Magazine, The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Judaism, Tradition, Modern Judaism, The New York Times, Newsday, Forward, The Jewish Week, and The Baltimore Jewish Times. Dr. Nadler is the author of: Faith of the Mithnagdim: Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rapture (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), The Hasidim in America (American Jewish Committee Monograph Series, 1995).
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