page_title: Abraham Isaac Kook
section_title: Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem
hierarchical_section_title: Abraham Isaac Kook / Biography / Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem
caption_attribution_description: English: Abraham Isaac Kook
context_page_description: Abraham Isaac Kook was an Orthodox rabbi, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine in the Land of Israel, the founder of Yeshiva Mercaz HaRav, a Jewish thinker, posek, kabbalist, and a renowned talmid chacham. He is considered one of the fathers of religious Zionism.
context_section_description: Upon returning from Europe in 1919, he was appointed the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, and soon after, as first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine in 1921.
  Despite the fact that many of the new settlers were hostile to religion, Kook defended their behaviour in theological terms. His stance was deemed heretical by the traditional religious establishment  and in 1921 his detractors bought up the whole edition of his newly published Orot to prevent its circulation,  plastering the offending passages on the walls of Meah Shearim.  Soon later, an anonymous pamphlet entitled Kol Ha-Shofar appeared containing a declaration signed by rabbis Sonnenfeld, Diskin and others saying: “We were astonished to see and hear gross things, foreign to the entire Torah, and we see that which we feared before his coming here, that he will introduce new forms of deviance that our rabbis and ancestors could not have imagined …. It is to be deemed a sorcerer’s book? If so, let it be known that it is forbidden to study [let alone] rely on all his nonsense and dreams.” It also quoted Aharon Rokeach of Belz who stated "And know that the rabbi from Jerusalem, Kook - may his name be blotted out - is completely wicked and has already ruined many of our youth, entrapping them with his guileful tongue and impure books." Returning to Poland after a visit to Palestine in 1921, Avraham Mordechai Alter of Ger wrote that he endeavoured to calm the situation by getting Kook to renounce any expressions which may have unwittingly resulted in a profanation of God's name. He then approached the elder rabbis of the Yishuv asking them to withdraw their denunciation. The rabbis claimed that their intention had been to reach a consensus on whether Kook's writings were acceptable, but their letter had been surreptitiously inserted by Kook's critics in to their inflammatory booklet without their knowledge.  A harsh proclamation issued against Kook in 1926 contained letters from three European rabbis in which  Yosef Rosin referred to him as an "ignorant bore", Shaul Brach intimated that his Hebrew initials spelt the word "vomit" and likened him to King Jeroboam known for seducing the masses to idolatry, and Eliezer David Greenwald declared him an untrustworthy authority on Jewish law adding that his books should be burnt. When Jewish prayers at the Western Wall were broken up by the British in 1928, Kook called for a fast day, but as usual, the ultra-Orthodox community ignored his calls. As a 16 year old student in 1932, Menachem Porush was expelled from Etz Chaim Yeshiva for shooting and burning an effigy of Kook. There were nevertheless other rabbis within Orthodoxy who spoke out in support of Kook, including the Chofetz Chaim and Isser Zalman Meltzer.
  In March 1924, in an effort to raise funds for Torah institutions in Palestine and Europe, Kook travelled to America with Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein of the Slabodka Yeshiva and the Rabbi of Kaunas, Avraham Dov Baer Kahana Shapiro.  In the same year, Kook founded the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem. 
  Kook died in Jerusalem in 1935 and his funeral was attended by an estimated 20,000 mourners.
caption: Kook with Mayor of New York John F. Hylan (1924)
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