The Orthodox thinkers who pushed the boundaries of tradition

Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New – the Unique Vision of Rav Kook
Marc B.Shapiro
Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation/Liverpool University Press

Marc Shapiro delights in showing Orthodox Jews that not everything they think about Judaism is historically correct. Through meticulous scholarship, he has consistently debunked common beliefs about Jewish dogma and highlighted how so-called traditionalists often undermine tradition through censorship and misrepresentation. I have enjoyed his provocations.

In his latest work, Shapiro delves into the soul of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), the jurist, mystic, and Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine. While Rav Kook's unique views have long been acknowledged, recent publications of previously unpublished works, uncensored letters, and private musings reveal the full extent of his radicalism, according to Shapiro.

Here's the essence: Talmud is acceptable, but Kabbalah is superior, and individuals should pursue what naturally draws them. Halachah is necessary but can hinder the truly righteous from achieving their spiritual potential.

Books are valuable, but intuitive knowledge is more so, even when it comes to sacred texts. While fear of heaven is commendable, it shouldn't obstruct our innate sense of morality. Mohammed and Jesus possessed some prophetic abilities, and monotheism can sometimes lead to religious hatred.

So, what do we make of all this? Shapiro doesn't advocate adopting all of Rav Kook's thoughts, as not all of them are suited to our time, for example, his views on women. Instead, he encourages us to view Rav Kook as a role model for courageous thinking and forging new paths. But where do these paths lead? Despite his radical ideas, Rav Kook was ultra-conservative in his practice. Is Shapiro suggesting we travel beyond Rav Kook in this regard?

I also wonder whether Rav Kook is not so much a role model, rather than a testament to the inherent conflict many of us feel between an innate heartfelt spirituality inspired by nature, music, poetry, science, and universal love on one side, and established religion on the other, often characterised by rote practice, an obsession with texts and authority, groupthink, suspicion of others, and an institutional resistance to change.

Marc Shapiro has dedicated his academic career to broadening traditionalist Judaism by appealing to tradition. In contrast, Rav Kook, in his innermost moments, seems to sense a divine force beyond religion – a type of holiness that overturns all tradition. The real challenge lies in channelling this through a particularist framework, which may indeed require something truly radical.

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Subversive writer who could see a holy joke

Living Time – Festival Discourses for the Present Age

Rabbi Shagar

Maggid Modern Classics

Religious Zionism has been both a sustaining force within Israeli society and a source of deep conflict. Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (the Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine), was a key figure in the movement in the 1970s and 1980s.

Zvi Yehuda Kook viewed the building of settlements throughout the Holy Land as a religious duty and championed the fulfilment of the messianic dream of achieving Jewish sovereignty over the entire Holy Land, including what he called Judea and Samaria.

In the 1990s, a group of New Religious Zionists emerged who distanced themselves from this blend of messianic religion and nationalist politics to embrace disciplines beyond Torah including film, psychology and even yoga, while stressing the philosophical values of authenticity, freedom, creativity and individualism.

Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Rav Shagar) (1949-2007) was foremost among them. The crisis of religious Zionism in recent years has prompted a renewed interest in Rav Shagar within Israel, and this is now spreading to the English-speaking Jewish world, thanks to works like this; a translation of his thoughts organised around the Jewish year, brilliantly edited by Professor Alan Brill and skillfully translated by Levi Morrow.

  

 

Despite Rav Shagar’s adherence to traditional practice, his writings are refreshingly subversive. The ghost of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook is never too far away. Drawing on sources ranging from Chasidism to continental philosophy, they invite the spiritual seeker to find godliness within the unlikeliest of places: in chaos, the absurd and existential threat.

Rav Shagar sees the ecstatic joy felt on Purim as paradoxically arising from God’s absence in the story and the looming threat re-experienced in our own time: “Within the loss and absence, we discover an unlimited presence, even more than the fullness of presence itself”.

Uncertainty, like that experienced in the Purim story, very often reveals the underlying quality that allows us to ride out the storm. The ecstasy comes from “the very ability to turn this capricious and frightening story [of Purim] into a joke”. The joke becomes holy.

Rav Shagar’s writings strike a chord these days. Are we not currently living in the topsy-turvy world of Purim, with its attendant chaos and violence? Rav Shagar offers some hope by nudging us towards that infinite constant beyond words, the self, this world of chance and the mystical paradox.