The Greatness of Eretz Yisrael
By Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook
(Adapted by Tzvi Fishman)
Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook was honored and revered by all of the leading Torah Scholars of his time. His colleagues considered him to be among the Torah Giant of the generation and perhaps the master of them all. He was universally recognized as a genius in Talmud, Halachah, and Kabbalah. The Rebbe of Gur compared Rabbi Kook to Rabbi Meir, a great luminary in Talmudic times whose Torah horizons surpassed all of his contemporaries. Like a prophet, Rabbi Kook described visions of the future that others failed to see. Divine Inspiration characterized his teachings. While Rabbi Kook faced great opposition, the resistance he met came from the lower ranks of the Torah world, from people of ordinary understanding who were unable to fathom the heights of his unbounded perceptions. Often, the followers of other important Rabbis, known as “zealots”, attacked Rabbi Kook without mercy, out of fear that he would divert the limelight from their own Torah camps. Another motive was their fear that as Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Kook would divert Torah funding toward the establishment of an official Chief Rabbinate, lessening their share of the always insufficient sums garnered from Torah communities and benefactors around the world.
There were occasions when Rabbi Kook’s only son, Rav Tzvi Yehuda, felt a need to caution his father about airing opinions that the Haredi community in general failed to understand – for example Rabbi Kook’s praise of the contributions of secular Zionist pioneers toward the rebuilding of the nation in Zion. While critical of their non-kosher lifestyle, Rabbi Kook proclaimed that the pioneers were also a part of the Divinely- orchestrated Redemption of Israel which the Conductor of the World was bringing to pass after a long and bitter exile in foreign lands. Rabbi Kook insisted that the esoteric understandings of Hashem’s workings in the world must be revealed at the time of Redemption, even if people failed to immediately grasp them.
Another foundation of Torah which Rabbi Kook emphasized, and which many people in the religious world could not fathom, was the supreme value of the Land of Israel to the growth of Torah and to the development of the physical and spiritual sides of the Israelite Nation. He wrote:
“There is a vast and exalted difference between the Torah of the Land of Israel and the Torah of the Diaspora. In the Land of Israel, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit bursts forth to rest upon every Torah scholar who seeks to study Torah for its own sake, and all the more so upon a gathering of Torah Scholars. The general spirit (of holiness), flowing pleasantly and continually expanding (in Eretz Yisrael), refines the details of Torah and broadens the halachot – all from Above downward. This is not the case in the Diaspora.
“Outside the Land, a holy, all-encompassing spirit cannot be drawn in impure air and upon impure soil. Rather, each individual detail of the Torah raises a spark, a small illumination, emanating from the spirit of the living God, Who dwells among His people here in the Land of Life, a spark which draws an illumination (even) to the student outside the Land….
“Concerning the Redemption, this is the Jerusalem Talmud; concerning ןits substitute, this is the Babylonian Talmud (Zohar Chadash, Ruth).
“This understanding sheds light upon the nature of Torah study in general, upon its methods, upon the proper order of complete Divine service fitting for the select Torah Scholars in the place that is the light of the world (Eretz Yisrael), and even upon the very substance of independent reasoning, concepts, novel insights, and dialectical analyses.
“’In the future, all synagogues and study halls in the Diaspora will be established in the Land of Israel’ (Megilla 29).
“We are able to draw down the dew of lights from the atmosphere of the beloved Land in so flowing and abundant a manner, in a way that so refines and sanctifies every spirit, every soul, and every inward faculty, until the light of the Babylonian Talmud will unite with the Jerusalem Talmud, and together they will shine with sevenfold light.
“This is what we must aspire to. It should not be considered arrogance on our part, for “A small group in the Land of Israel is dearer than the Great Sanhedrin in the Diaspora” (Jerusalem Talmud, Nedarim, 6:8).
“The foundation of the Exile’s continuity and the degradation that persists in the world stems solely from the fact that the Land of Israel, its value and its wisdom, are not made known, and from the failure to rectify the Sin of the Spies who slandered the Land. The proper repentance for this sin is to proclaim and announce throughout the entire world the Land’s splendor and majesty, its holiness and its honor.” (Rabbi Kook’s Letters, 96).
Here, we must pause and pay attention to Rabbi Kook’s words. He states that the Exile continues because the exalted significance of Eretz Yisrael to the Jewish Nation and to Torah are not sufficiently known. Also, he states that the Exile in foreign, impure lands continues because the Sin of the Spies (the Meraglim) who rejected the Land remains uncorrected in that Diaspora Jews persist in remaining there. The needed rectification will come when Jews “proclaim and announce throughout the entire world the Land’s splendor and majesty, its holiness and its honor.”
Rabbi Kook’s letter continues:
“Would that, for our part, after all these exalted descriptions, we might merit to express even one ten-thousandth of the preciousness of the beloved Land, the majesty of the light of its Torah, the greatness of the light of its wisdom, and the Holy Spirit that dwells within it.
“It is understood that in every matter of holiness, and likewise in worldly matters, there are different levels and degrees. As our Sages said, “Each person is burned by the canopy of his fellow” (see Baba Batra 75).
“However, this particular kind of light and this delight of holiness, which Torah Scholars who seek God find in the Land of Israel, does not exist at all in the Diaspora.”
This certainly is a striking remark. How can it be that the exalted illumination of Torah and the delight of its holiness do not exist at all outside of the Land of Israel? After all, in all generations there were great Torah Scholars in the lands of our wanderings. Even so, Rabbi Kook boldly states that the Torah illumination and the holy delight of its study in impure lands cannot be compared in any way with the pure illumination and holy delight found in the Holy Land. What is his source for this statement?
The source is Rabbi Kook himself. His own life experience. What he himself felt on the radar of his soul. After all, in his youth he studied with great Rabbis in Russia and learned at the famous Volozhin Yeshiva under the tutelage of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (the Netziv). He was appointed to his first Rabbinic position in Zaumel by the Chofetz Chaim who wrote in a letter: “My heart rejoices over this. May Hashem help him ascend higher and higher, for he is truly great in Torah.”
Rabbi Kook knew what it meant to learn Torah among the greatest Torah Scholars in the Diaspora. Yet when he ascended to live in the Land of Israel, he repeatedly wrote and spoke about the incomparable heights of Torah learning in the Holy Land. Thus he concludes his letter praising the splendors of Hashem’s cherished Land:
“And I myself testify to all this from my own knowledge, limited though it may be.”
