A SHORT INTRODUCTION
"In truth, all darkness is merely diminished light" (Orot Hakodesh II, p. 455).
This profoundly optimistic statement can serve as the summation of the teachings of a remarkable thinker of the twentieth century, Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook (R. Abraham Isaac Kook).
Rav Kook (1865-1935), first Chief Rabbi of the holy land, was a Talmudic genius, a communal leader, a saintly personality, an impassioned visionary, a fighter for social justice, a poet and-most of all-a mystic. He was also a deeply original thinker, the breadth, inclusive spirit and transcendent ecstasy of whose teachings embrace the entirety of creation.
Rav Kook's teachings are exalted, piercing and universal. "From the well of kindness," he proclaims, "your love for humanity must burst forth-not as an arbitrary obligation, for then it would lose the most clear aspect of its brilliance, but as a powerful movement of the spirit within you."
Rav Kook was a poet of the soul and a spokesperson for a complete human spirit that embraces contradiction, that reconciles the poles of this-worldly and other-worldly experience. His writings celebrate the union of legalism and poetry, particularism and universalism, faith hidden in atheism and atheism hidden in faith, the spirit revealed from the flesh, and beauty revealed through ugliness.
Rav Kook's writings are the gifts of a universal teacher. Although he is principally known to the English-speaking world for his teachings on repentance and Zionism, he was a polymath who addressed every possible topic, and always brilliantly: poetry and war, divine immanence and evolution, social justice and aesthetics. All of these caught his attention and were refracted through his ever-searching mind and soaring soul.
Rav Kook sang of universal creativity, of an unceasing fecundity that is the natural song of all being.
He championed the poetic and creative spirit within each individual. "Every time our heart beats with a true expression of spirituality," he wrote, "every time a new and exalted thought is born, we hear the likeness of a Godly angel's voice at the doors of our soul asking that we allow him entry so that he may appear to us in the totality of his beauty."
Ultimately, Rav Kook's robust message is one of life and growth, hope and optimism. "Death is a false phenomenon," he taught, and "to the degree that the quantity of movement toward wholeness grows, evil decreases and goodness is revealed."
In an era searching for guideposts, access to Rav Kook's formulations can provide a valuable resource. The teachings on this web site present the brilliant and powerful ideas of this magnificent philosopher and mystic.
IF YOU DESIRE
If you desire, human being, look at the light of God's Presence in everything.
Look at the Eden of spiritual life, at how it blazes into each corner and crevice of life, spiritual and of this world, right before your eyes of flesh and your eyes of soul.
Gaze at the wonders of creation, at their divine life-not like some dim phenomenon that is placed before your eyes from afar.
But know the reality in which you live.
Know yourself and your world.
Know the thoughts of your heart, and of all who speak and think.
Find the source of life inside you, higher than you, around you. [Find] the beautiful ones alive in this generation in whose midst you are immersed.
The love within you: lift it up to its mighty root, to its beauty of Eden.
Send it spreading out to the entire flood of the soul of the Life of worlds, Whose light is reduced only by incapable human expression.
Gaze at the lights, at what they contain.
Do not let the Names, phrases and letters swallow up your soul.
They have been given over to you.
You have not been given over to them.
Rise up.
Rise up, for you have the power.
You have wings of the spirit, wings of powerful eagles.
Do not deny them, or they will deny you.
Seek them, and you will find them instantly.
Orot Hakodesh I, pp. 83-84
