Abraham Isaac Kook

Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935) was a Lithuanian-born rabbi and Jewish thinker who became the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine. His theology gave religious meaning to Zionism, secular Jewish nationalism, and the return to the Land of Israel.

Religious Zionism: A Jewish movement that supports Zionism while grounding Jewish national revival in religious belief and practice. Kook interpreted Zionism, including its secular forms, as part of a divine redemptive process.
Grīva: A town in present-day Latvia, historically associated with the Jewish community in which Kook was born. Kook was born there in 1865, when the town belonged to the Russian Empire.
David Cohen (the Nazir): A Jewish scholar and ascetic who edited and preserved writings by Abraham Isaac Kook. Cohen helped organize and publish Kook’s work, shaping how later generations encountered it.
Chief Rabbinate of Israel: Israel’s state-recognized rabbinical authority for Jewish religious services and matters of personal status. Kook helped establish its predecessor in Mandatory Palestine and served as its first Ashkenazi chief rabbi.
Labor Zionism: A Zionist movement that joined Jewish national revival with socialist ideas and organized labor. Its secular pioneers embodied the kind of national activity Kook interpreted religiously.
Jewish mysticism: Jewish religious traditions concerned with divine reality, creation, and the soul’s hidden dimensions. Kook drew on mystical ideas to describe the spiritual unity underlying existence.
Volozhin Yeshiva: A Lithuanian Jewish academy founded in 1803 that became a leading center of Talmudic study. Kook studied there, receiving a foundation in the Lithuanian rabbinic tradition.
Zvi Yehuda Kook: An Israeli rabbi and son of Abraham Isaac Kook who became a major teacher of religious Zionism. He transmitted his father’s teachings and connected them to post-1967 settlement activism.
Mercaz HaRav: A Jerusalem yeshiva founded by Abraham Isaac Kook in 1924. Kook created this institution to cultivate Torah learning shaped by his religious Zionist outlook.
Revisionist Zionism: A Zionist movement founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky that emphasized Jewish statehood and military self-defense. It pursued national revival through a political program unlike Kook’s theological account.

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Yitzhak HaLevi HerzogRelated: Kook’s institutional role preceded Herzog’s leadership of Israel’s Ashkenazi rabbinate.