Essays on the Thought and Philosophy of Rabbi Kook PDF Download

Author: Ezra Gellman
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780845348260
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Each essay in this anthology is an analysis or evaluation of one or several aspects of the thought and philosophy of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel.

Author: Gideon Weitzman
Publisher: Jason Aronson, Incorporated
ISBN: 1461630770
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
The author writes: "Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook (5635-5695/1865-1935) was one of the greatest Jewish leaders of recent history. He was steeped in Jewish knowledge of all kinds, a master of halacha, Talmud, and Jewish philosophy, and he also had a good knowledge of the general philosophy and science of his day." Rav Kook was also a prolific writer and complex thinker who developed a system of understanding the events that were happening to the Jewish people. It was a time of change, HerzI convened the Zionist Congress in Basel, irreligious Zionists were moving to Israel and establishing settlements and kibbutzim. There was a negative reaction from many religious leaders to the young men and women. Darwin's theory and Freud I s new science were gaining popularity and many Jews were drawn further away from a traditional lifestyle. Rav Kook was able to perceive the inner yearnings that accompanied these revolutionary changes. They represented a deep yearning within these young Jews for morality, equality, and justice. They realized that the world was not static but evolved and moved in a positive direction. Rav Kook embraced both Zionism and the young irreligious Zionists. He developed a philosophy that was based on the kabbalistic concept of fusion. The world appears divided; there is a break between heaven and earth, physical and spiritual, politics and religion. But at the heart of it all, everything is fused into a cohesive unit. This is true for the individual, the nation, and all of existence. Rav Kook set about publicizing his theories and spreading his teachings to young thinkers, both religious and secular. This represents the bulk of his voluminous writings. Rav Kook never wrote a book of commentary on the Torah, but he did create a lens through which we can perceive and better understand the Torah. That is the basis for this book.

Author: Lawrence J. Kaplan
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814746527
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
This book offers a range of analyses and interpretations covering the major areas of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook's thought. Among the issues discussed are: his relationship to the Jewish mystical, philosophical, and halakhic traditions; poetry and spirituality; harmonism and pluralism; tolerance and its limits; and Zionism, messianism, and politics.

Author: Abraham Isaac Kook
Publisher: Paulist Press
ISBN: 9780809121595
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
The chief Rabbi of Palestine prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, Kook (1865-1935) represents the renewal of the Jewish mystical tradition in modern times.

Author: Yehudah Mirsky
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300164246
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
DIV The life and thought of a forceful figure in Israel’s religious and political life /div

Author: Yehudah Mirsky
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300165552
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
DIV Rav Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935) was one of the most influential—and controversial—rabbis of the twentieth century. A visionary writer and outstanding rabbinic leader, Kook was a philosopher, mystic, poet, jurist, communal leader, and veritable saint. The first chief rabbi of Jewish Palestine and the founding theologian of religious Zionism, he struggled to understand and shape his revolutionary times. His life and writings resonate with the defining tensions of Jewish life and thought. A powerfully original thinker, Rav Kook combined strict traditionalism and an embrace of modernity, Orthodoxy and tolerance, piety and audacity, scholasticism and ecstasy, and passionate nationalism with profound universalism. Though little known in the English-speaking world, his life and teachings are essential to understanding current Israeli politics, contemporary Jewish spirituality, and modern Jewish thought. This biography, the first in English in more than half a century, offers a rich and insightful portrait of the man and his complex legacy. Yehudah Mirsky clears away widespread misunderstandings of Kook’s ideas and provides fresh insights into his personality and worldview. Mirsky demonstrates how Kook's richly erudite, dazzlingly poetic writings convey a breathtaking vision in which "the old will become new, and the new will become holy." /div

Author: David Shatz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781934843420
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
The essays collected in this volume present carefully crafted and often creative interpretations of major Jewish texts and thinkers, as well as original treatments of significant issues in Jewish theology and ethics. Conversant with both Jewish philosophy and the methods and literature of analytic philosophy, the author frequently seeks to bring them into dialogue, and in addition taps the philosophical dimensions of Jewish law.. The book opens with a philosophical analysis of biblical narratives. It then investigates the relationship between Judaism and general culture as conceived by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, followed by interpretations of Maimonides' moral theory and his views on human perfection. The remainder of the volume examines both critically and constructively the relationship between religious anthropology and theories of providence; the problem of evil; the challenges that neuroscience poses to religion; law and morality in Judaism; theological dimensions of 9/11; the limits of altruism; concepts of autonomy in Jewish medical ethics; and the epistemology of religious belief.

Author: Daniel Rynhold
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108619754
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
What does one do as a Jewish philosopher if one is convinced by much of the Nietzschean critique of religion? Is there a contemporary Jewish philosophical theology that can convince in a post-metaphysical age? The argument of this book is that Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik (1903–1993) - the leading twentieth-century exponent of Modern Orthodoxy - presents an interpretation of halakhic Judaism, grounded in traditional sources, that brings a life-affirming Nietzschean sensibility to the religious life. Soloveitchik develops a form of Judaism replete with key Nietzschean ideas, which parries Nietzsche's critique by partially absorbing it. This original study of Soloveitchik's philosophy highlights his unique contribution to Jewish thought for students and scholars in Jewish studies, while also revealing his wider significance for those working more broadly in fields such as philosophy and religious studies.

Author: Shai Cherry
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644693429
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 712

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Book Description
Coherent Judaism begins by excavating the theologies within the Torah and tracing their careers through the Jewish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Any compelling, contemporary Judaism must cohere as much as possible with traditional Judaism and everything else we believe to be true about our world. The challenge is that over the past two centuries, our understandings of both the Torah and nature have radically changed. Nevertheless, much Jewish wisdom can be translated into a contemporary idiom that both coheres with all that we believe and enriches our lives as individuals and within our communities. Coherent Judaism explains why pre-modern Judaism opted to privilege consensus around Jewish behavior (halakhah) over belief. The stresses of modernity have conspired to reveal the incoherence of that traditional approach. In our post-Darwinian and post-Holocaust world, theology must be able to withstand the challenges of science and history. Traditional Jewish theologies have the resources to meet those challenges. Coherent Judaism concludes by presenting a philosophy of halakhah that is faithful to the covenantal aspiration to live long on the land that the Lord, our God, has given us.

Author: Manuel Duarte de Oliveira
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110741180
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
With exacting scholarship and fecund analysis, Manuel Oliveira probes through the lens of Martin Buber (1878-1965) the theological and political ambiguities of Israel’s divine election. These ambiguities became especially pronounced with the emergence of Zionism. Wary, indeed, alarmed by the tendency of some of his fellow Zionists to conflate divine chosenness with nationalism, Buber sought to secure the theological significance of election by both steering Zionism from hypertrophic nationalism and by a sustained program to revalorize what he called alternately “Hebrew Humanism.” As Oliveira demonstrates, Buber viewed the idea of election teleologically, espousing a universal mission of Israel, which effectively calls upon Zionism to align its political and cultural project to universal objectives. Thus, in addressing a Zionist congress, he rhetorically asked, “What then is this spirit of Israel of which you are speaking? It is the spirit of fulfillment. Fulfillment of what? Fulfillment of the simple truth that man has been created for a purpose (...) Our purpose is the upbuilding of peace (...) And that is its spirit, the spirit of Israel (...) the people of Israel was charged to lead the way to righteousness and justice.”