Towards the Mystical Experience of Modernity
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Beschreibung:
Avraham Yitzhaq Ha-Cohen Kook (1865-1935) stands as a colossal figure of modern Jewish history and thought. Jurist, mystic, poet, theologian, communal leader, founder of the modern Chief Rabbinate and still the defining thinker of Religious Zionism, he is indispensable for understanding modern Jewish thought, the contemporary State of Israel, and the most fundamental interactions of religion, nationalism, ethics and spirituality. Despite countless studies of him, almost no full-fledged intellectual biography of him exists in any language. This study of the years before his momentous move to Jaffa in 1904, drawing on little-known works, including recently published manuscripts, begins to fill that gap. It traces his life and times in the remarkably intense Rabbinic intellectual milieu of late nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and his path from a profound, regularly rationalist traditionalism, towards a dynamic theology and spiritual practice weaving together Kabbalah, philosophy, universal ethics, and romantic mysticism.
Introduction
The Work in Brief
Precis
Mapping Rav Kook
Many Editorial Hands
Academic Approaches
The Missing Early Decades in Rav Kook's Corpus
Towards Expressivism and the Subject
Rav Kook and the Medieval Philosophical Tradition
The Early Writings
Self-Cultivation, Philosophical Ethics, Mussar
Chapter One: Childhood and Early Years: Between Mitnagdism, Hasidism and Haskalah 42 Rabbinic Humanism and Haskalah
Geographic and Cultural Background
Family Backgound
Social Changes: Haskalah's Shift from Enlightenment to Radicalism
Rabbinic Maskilim
Childhood and Early Education
Studies in Lyutsin and Smorgon and Engagement with Haskalah
Betrothal and Aderet
Avraham Kook Goes to Volozhin
Marriage, Poverty and First Rabbinic Post
Literary Debut
'Ittur Sofrim
Loss
Chapter 2: All in the Mind: The Writings of the Zeimel Period
The Small-Town Rabbinate
Talmudic Commentary and a Sage's Discontents
Halakhic Writings and a Touch of Philosophy
Hevesh Pe'er
The Primacy of the Mind in Hevesh Pe'er
Midbar Shur
Moshe Hayim Luzzatto
Midbar Shur and the Pursuit of Perfection, Jewish and Universal
An Elegy for His First Wife
Conclusion
Chapter 3: Boisk at the Crossroads of Mussar and Tiqqun
Unease in Zeimel and the Influence of Eliasberg
Boisk
Developments in Yeshiva Culture and the Mussar Movement
The Turn to Interiority as a Defining Theme of this Period
: The Self and Tiqqun
Lithuanian Kabbalah
Pinkasim 15 & 16
"The Rustlings of My Heart": Rav Kook and B.M. Levin
Conclusion
Chapter 4: 'Eyn Ayah: Intellect, Imagination, Self-Expression, Prophecy
'Eyn Ayah and Modernity's Expressivist Turn
The Work: Genre, Method and the Study of Aggadah in Rabbinic Circles
Two Introductions to the Work
Self-Perfection
Intellect, Imagination, Feeling
Perfection of the Individual and the Whole and the Internalization of Kabbalah Strategies of Containment
The Renewal of Prophecy and the Mission of the Artist
The Emergence of Dialectic
The Problem of Self-Love
The Study of Aggadah and Spiritual Individualism
Concluding Remarks on Expressivism and Subjectivity
Chapter 5: The Turn Towards Nationalism: Between Ideology and Utopia, or, Ethics and Eschatology
Jewish Nationalism in Eastern Europe
Early Mentions of Nationalism and Hints of Apocalypse
First Responses to the Zionist Movement
First Response to Orthodox Anti-Zionism
Ha-Peles
The First Essay: Israel's Universal Mission
Interlude: Creation of the Mizrahi
The Second Essay: Mobilizing Literature
The Third Essay: Ethics, History and Eschatology
Alexandrov's Response: Rav Kook and Ahad Ha-Am
'Eyn Ayah Passages on History and Eschatology
Assessing the Essays: Ideology and Utopia
Chapter 6:’The New Guide of the Perplexed’ 'The Last in Boisk': Making Sense of Heresy en Route to Zion
To Jaffa and Palestine
The Second Aliyah
‘The New Guide of the Perplexed’
'The Last in Boisk': Heresy, Nietzsche, Apocalypse
The Journal
Messiah ben Joseph
Expressivism and the Song of Songs
Heresy and Eschatology
Ethics, Jesus, Nietzsche, Qelippah
Working with Heresy, Reworking Torah Study and Theology
Leaving Boisk
Conclusion
Transformations in the Land of Israel
Seven Shifts: From To-Down to Bottom-Up
Philosophy, Mysticism, Experience
Implications for the Study of Religion: Theology as Autobiography
Implications for Rav Kook Studies
Berdyczewsky and Rav Kook: Between Rupture and Dialectic