HaRav Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook on Yom Haatzmaut
By David Samson, author of the book “Torat Eretz Yisrael” on the teachings of HaRav Tzvi Yehuda Kook.
I had the incredible privilege of learning Torah for 12 years at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem under the tutelage of HaRav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, a Torah Giant like few others in our time. To glance at his face was like to look at the sun. Or to gaze at Mount Sinai or at the boulders of the Kotel. Greatness in Torah emanated from his brow. A towering faith in Hashem shone in his eyes. His every word was coated with wisdom. Few Rabbis said the things he said. Very few Rabbis did the things he did. How fortunate were his students to learn from his teachings and from his deeds. Yet he insisted that nothing was his own. Everything he knew, he said, he had learned from his father, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook. The “new light on Zion” which he championed, the “Torah HaGoelet,” which he embodied, “the Redeeming Torah,” was his inheritance from his father, he always maintained.
Nowhere did this Torah uniqueness come to light more than in the Rosh Yeshiva’s attitude toward Yom Ha’atzmaut.
On Israel Independence Day, just two weeks before the Six-Day War, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda Hakohen Kook stood up in the study hall of the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva and gave an unforgettable speech. Several weeks later, after all of the miraculous events which brought Jerusalem and the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria back into our hands, students remembered with wonder all of the prophetic words which the Rosh Yeshiva had spoken.
Rabbi Kook began his speech to the crowded assembly by recalling the night in November, nineteen years before, when the United Nations voted to partition the Palestine of the British Mandate into a truncated Jewish State. The gentile nations of the world were negotiating in New York on the allocation of Palestine between the Arabs and the Jews. Radios all over Israel were tuned to the broadcast. Suddenly, Rav Kook, said, the announcement came….
The Rosh Yeshiva paused in his speech. His emotion filled the hall. That night nineteen years before, when the announcement had come over the radio, a spontaneous joy had swept over the country. Men, women, and children rushed out of their homes to dance in the streets and celebrate the news that after nearly two thousand years of exile, Israel would have its own State. Yet, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda had a different reaction. As he recounted the UN decision, his voice echoed with pain:
“The connection to the Holy Temple,” he began. “The connection to the Kedusha, to holiness, and to the life, and to the soul….”
He couldn’t finish the sentence that spoke of the dividing of Jerusalem. The memory overwhelmed him. He wept as he stood before the students and guests of the Yeshiva, who had come to celebrate Israel Independence Day. The connection to Jerusalem, and to our Holy Land, our life and our soul, had been severed by the decision in New York to partition our Land. Eretz Yisrael, the eternal inheritance of our forefathers, had been cut into pieces. Large portions of the country had been placed into foreign hands. In that hour, when the multitudes were celebrating on the streets of the country, Rav Tzvi Yehuda sat alone in his father’s old study in Jerusalem. Even nineteen years later, the pain of the memory was etched on his face.
“I couldn’t leave the house,” he said. “How heartbroken I was. I couldn’t go out to join the festive celebration on Jaffe Street. I couldn’t take part in the rejoicing.
“I sat alone. Distressed. It weighed so heavily on me. In those first hours, I couldn’t come to terms with what had happened. The word of Hashem had come to pass – ‘They have divided My Land!’ (Joel, 4:2). With all of my effort and strength, with all of my soul and my spirit and willpower, it was impossible for me to go outside.
“How could it be that I didn’t go out?” he rhetorically asked.
“THEY DIVIDED MY LAND!” he shouted. Then, forcefully, he cried out, “WHERE IS OUR HEVRON?! DO WE FORGET THIS?! AND WHERE IS OUR SHECHEM?! DO WE FORGET ABOUT THIS?! AND WHERE IS OUR JERICHO?! DO WE FORGET THIS, TOO?! AND WHERE IS OUR OTHER-SIDE OF THE JORDAN?! WHERE IS EACH BLOCK OF OUR EARTH?! EACH PART AND PARCEL OF HASHEM’S LAND?!”
“IS IT IN OUR HANDS TO RELINQUISH ANY MILLIMETER OF THIS?!” he shouted, and answered, “G-D FORBID!”
Everyone in the Yeshiva was silent. People had gathered to celebrate our Independence, but Rav Tzvi Yehuda wanted everyone to know and to feel that our triumph was still incomplete.
“And so I couldn’t go out to the street,” he continued. “I couldn’t in this situation, when I was so utterly wounded, when I was so cut to pieces. THEY DIVIDED MY LAND!”
“THEY DIVIDED THE LAND OF HASHEM! Because of political considerations!”
“I couldn’t go out and dance and be merry, the way we dance and are joyous today. That was the way it was that night, during those hours.”
The Rosh Yeshiva’s anguish over the partitioning of Eretz Yisrael was shared by Rabbi Yaacov Moshe Harlop, a student and close friend of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook, Rav Tzvi Yehuda’s father. The day after the UN announcement, he came to visit HaRav Tzvi Yehuda in Rabbi’s Kook’s old house on Jaffa Street. They sat in the same room which Rabbi Kook had used as his study and huddled together, shattered over what had occurred. Then, finding encouragement in each other, they quoted the verse of Hallel, “This is the L-rd’s doing; it is wondrous in our eyes.” Only then, Rav Tzvi Yehuda told the crowd at the Yom Haatzmaut celebration, did he find the strength to go out to join the nation.
“That first night, I didn’t go out to dance in the streets, because I felt that I, like the Land of Israel, had been cut into pieces and wounded in my heart. But afterward, with faith in Hashem, I knew that we would overcome the difficulties. I began to go out each year to dance on Yom Haatzmaut – out of recognition of Hashem’s Providence which is active in all of the events of our time.”
Rav Tzvi Yehuda’s love for Hashem also caused him to mourn the tragic state of affairs that not all of the nation celebrated the day as a holiday, nor recognized the miracles which the Almighty had performed for us in gathering our exiles back to Zion and leading us to renewed sovereignty in our Land.
“In the early years of the State, I used to go out and wander about the streets of Jerusalem for several hours to be with the joyous nation, the multitudes of young men and women,” he recalled. “I saw this as a mitzvah, as an obligation, as it says, ‘Let Israel rejoice in its Maker; let the children of Zion rejoice in their King’ (Tehillim, 149:2). To my sadness, each time, I was filled with regret by something which borders on a Chillul Hashem, a desecration of G-d. The Elders, the Gedolei Torah of the Haredi community, they didn’t appear. Why weren’t they out on the streets of Jerusalem? Each year, how I longed to see them.”
HaRav Tzvi Yehuda agreed to have a party in the Yeshiva only on the condition that afterwards they would go out and dance together with everyone, in order to show that the party was no private celebration, but a celebration of all of the Nation.
HaRav Tzvi Yehuda would eagerly go to the annual military parade and stand with his students in solidarity across from the Knesset. He saw in the military display a revelation of the Israeli Statehood. With enormous joy he would say: “The tanks, the weapons, the planes, and the Tzahal uniforms are all ritual objects used for the mitzvah of settling the Land, for the mitzvah of maintaining our authority over the Land, and for the mitzvah of establishing Jewish independence in the Land. And because it is a Torah mitzvah then, behold, the tanks and airplanes are holy!”
Even when the Rosh Yeshiva was more than seventy years old, he still stood for many hours in the sun during the parade. When students brought him a chair, he refused to sit because he wanted to be with the people who stood along the route of the military parade. He would take interest in every vehicle and weapon that passed and remark “Praiseworthy is the Nation for who this is so, praiseworthy is the Nation whose G-d is Hashem,” (Tehillim, 144:15). He even entered a nearby Beit Midrash and urged the students who were learning there to go to the parade and to see what he called, “this great sanctification of Hashem’s Name.”
HaRav Tzvi Yehuda rejoiced over the State of Israel even though it was not perfect, and on Yom HaAtzmaut he danced with great joy. He once said, “When I saw the Nation of Israel dancing, I saw the Holy One Blessed Be He dancing with them.”
