Revival of General Bar Kokhba and Religious Zionism with Gush Emunim's Rabbi Avraham HaCohen Kook

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                     

                                Born September 7, 1865, Rabbi Kook in 1924

When some Israeli Jews saw that the Palestinians absolutely refused to accept Israel in 1974, they took upon the task to to include all the biblical homeland into today's Israel. 

They were like a new breed of men, to me more like Aluf "General" Bar Kokhba who was intent in taking back Jerusalem and did.  Gush Emunim was the name they took for themselves which means "Block of the Loyal" or "Group of the Loyal".  They were certainly Zionists, but Orthodox Zionists. They are Israeli religious nationalist group committed to the territorial integrity of the "Greater land of Israel." which includes the areas taken over in 1967--.After all, it was their land historically, and they had won it back in the huge attack of all the Arab counties in 1967 when they miraculously won it back by winning the war. That's Judea and Samaria, so called West Bank by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip.  It has been Gush Emunim that has been prominent in the Jewish settlement of these areas and in the opposition to territorial concessions that Netanyahu has gone along with.                                                 

 Rabbi Avraham HaCohen Kook was their spiritual mentor, a scholar who had been the chief rabbi in the 1930s  the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine. He is considered to be one of the fathers of religious Zionism and is known for founding the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva. (A Yeshiva is a school studying the biblical writings.)

His father, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Ha-Cohen Kook, was a student of the Volozhin yeshiva, the "mother of the Lithuanian yeshivas", whereas his maternal grandfather was a follower of the Kapust branch of the Hasidic movement, founded by the son of the third rebbe of Chabad, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn. His mother's name was Zlata Perl.  Born in  the Courland Governorate of the Russian Empire in 1865, today a part of Daugavpils, Latvia, he was the oldest of eight children.

In formulating religious Zionism, Rav Kook broke with most other Orthodox rabbis. Most Orthodox rabbis saw nothing but evil in the early Zionist pioneers who were hostile to religion, and in their belief that their labor rather than God would save the Jewish people.                 

Kook broke off from mainstream Orthodoxy of his period, "he found tremendous religious significance in the atheist pioneers of the different aliyotes." He saw them through mysticism and pragmatism, harbingers of the redemption.  To him, these Jeews who felt themselves farthest from G-d were finally undertaking  tikkun olam, the act of repairing the world which Reform Jews work on a lot., 

    Defending their progress on repairing the land of Israel 

Kook on the other hand, defended their behaviour in theological terms, and even hailed them as playing a role, by their labors, in hastening the messianic deliverance. His stance was deemed heretical by the traditional religious establishment.                   

This internationally popular, beige-colored spread is traditionally made with mashed chickpeas, tahini sesame paste, lemon juice, and garlic. People across the world love hummus for its tangy flavor and the fact that it is filled with nutrients.

When served, it is typically dressed with a drizzle of olive oil, and is then used as a dip for vegetables or a flavorful filling for flatbreads such as pita. Even today, not much is known about its origins, although the earliest mention of hummus dates back to 13th-century Egypt. 

Probably the best-known national dish of Israel, Israeli salad is actually a descendant of Arab and Palestinian salads. Finely diced tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, (optional) parsley, and either bell peppers or chili peppers are typically dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

Vegetarians will enjoy this:  Between 1901 and 1904, he published three articles which anticipate the philosophy that he later more fully developed in the Land of Israel. Kook personally refrained from eating meat except on the Sabbath and Festivals, and a compilation of extracts from his writing, compiled by his disciple David Cohen, known as "Rav HaNazir" (or "the Nazir of Jerusalem") and titled by him "A Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace," depicts a progression, guided by Torah law, towards a vegetarian society.

Combat soldier in 67 being a Gush Emunim and an Orthodox

                                            

Kook died in Jerusalem in 1935 at age 70, and his funeral was attended by an estimated 20,000 mourners.  His only son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, has taken his place. Many of Kook's disciples were young orthodox men fully part of the modern world, raised in a post-Holocaust world where Israel was a reality, not an aspiration, and who had no feelings inferiority towards the secular world or toward the Orthodox.  They have been the combat soldiers in 1967 and in 1973 and felt that G-d was demonstrating His will.  To them, 1973 had been the result of a faltering, and now the Jews must do what was expected of them and continue moving forward;  settling the biblical heart of the land, which the Zionists had been skirting because it was where most of the Palestinian Arabs lived;  the highlands of Judea-Samaria.  

After the Jewish village of Eli was attacked and 4 were killed, retribution is happening.  Jewish neighbors are reacting in kind and attacking Palestinian Arabs.  

Resource:

Book:  Right To Exist by Yaacov Lozowick, of Israel's Holocaust Museum

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