Not Just Any Old State But A Very Special State and Why: Israel

 Nadene Goldfoot                                     

A picture of Tel Aviv in 1924 would likely show a young city, still developing, with a mix of buildings and perhaps some camels. Tel Aviv was officially founded in 1909, and by 1924 it was experiencing rapid growth. The city was known for its modern architecture, particularly the "White City" style, which became prominent in the 1920s and 30s, according to Tourist

Israel.                                                                                         

        Rabbi Kook with Mayor of New York John F. Hylan (1924) on right with fur hat.  The climate in both Palestine and New York City was of Anti-Semitism. 

      Times Square, New York City 1924  notice the 2 boys sitting atop a building on right are wearing kippas.  

 John Francis Hylan (April 20, 1868 – January 12, 1936), also known as "Red Mike" Hylan, was the 96th Mayor of New York City (the seventh since the consolidation of the

 five boroughs), from 1918 to 1925.

 .  

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (Hebrew: אַבְרָהָם יִצְחָק הַכֹּהֵן קוּק; in 1924, First Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine,

and  philosopher of religious Zionism.  Born September 7, 1864 in Griva, Russian Empire (today's Daugavpils, Latvia) , died in Israel on September 1, 1935.  He was 71 years old.  

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, traveled to New York City in 1924 as part of a rabbinical delegation with a specific purpose: to raise funds for Torah institutions in both Eretz Yisrael and Europe. WWI had begun on July 28, 1914.  These institutions, such as yeshivas and talmud torahs, were facing financial difficulties, especially in the wake of the First World War. The Central Relief Committee was founded by leaders of the Agudat Ha-Rabbanim, the Union of American Orthodox Congregations, and other Orthodox Jews on October 8, 1914, to raise funds for the assistance of the masses of Jews overseas left homeless and impoverished as a result of the upheavals of World War I. On October 25, 1914, the American Jewish Relief Committee was formed by a more heterogeneous religious group. The committees decided to pool the funds they collected into the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), formed on November 27, 1914 to act as a disbursing agency. In mid-1915, the labor groups formed the People’s Relief Committee, which also joined the JDC.

Meeting with the Mayor:

Upon his arrival in New York, Rabbi Kook and his fellow delegates were given an official reception at City Hall by Mayor John P. Hylan and other public officials. During this reception, Rabbi Kook delivered a message in Hebrew, translated by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, in which he: 

• Thanked the American people for their support of the Balfour Declaration, recognizing the right of the Jewish people to establish a state in the Land of Israel.
• Stated that the honor shown to the delegation was an expression of honor for the Jewish people and the Torah, which he described as the "light of the world".
• Indicated that this honor demonstrated America's commitment to its ideals of equality and brotherly love. 

This meeting with the Mayor was a symbolic gesture recognizing the importance of the rabbinical delegation's mission and served to garner support for their cause among the Jewish community in New York. 

 In 1924, antisemitism was a significant issue in New York City, as it was across the United States during the early 20th century. While New York City was home to a large and growing Jewish population due to immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe, the presence of this large minority also coincided with increasing anti-Jewish sentiment and discrimination. Evidence of antisemitism in New York City and the U.S. in 1924 and surrounding years:

• Discrimination and Exclusion: Jewish people in New York City faced discrimination in various areas of life, including housing, employment, and access to social clubs. For instance, some hotels and resorts, such as the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs and the Manhattan Beach resort on Coney Island, openly excluded Jews.
• Quotas in Education: Universities, including some in the Northeast, adopted quotas to limit the number of Jewish students admitted. Columbia College, for example, established the country's first Office of Admissions in 1910 after a dean expressed concerns about the growing number of Jewish students.  To venture from the Lower East Side to Morningside Heights was also to cross a great cultural divide. By entering Columbia, Zukofsky was leaving the predominantly Jewish world of his family's neighborhood and entering an Ivy League that was still largely Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. About half of the student body at New York University was Jewish, as was the overwhelming majority--over 80 percent--of the students at City College. In contrast, Jews were distinctly in the minority at Columbia. (2) This was not merely an effect of Columbia's comparatively high tuition. There was an institutional climate of unspoken anti-Semitism in the University: there were very few Jews on the faculty--none at all in the English department--and anti-Semitic admissions policies had been established in the years after the First World War. The college administration, acutely conscious of Columbia's tenuous position within the elite ranks of the Ivy League, was worried that Columbia was becoming "too Jewish," too much a reflection of the city in which it was located. (As an Ivy League college song of the 1920s had it, "Oh, Harvard's run by millionaires, / And Yale is run by booze,/Cornell is run by farmers' sons,/Columbia's run by Jews." (3)) In response, college officials instituted ostensibly "regional" quotas whose effect was to reduce the Jewish population of Columbia from around forty percent--New York City itself was about thirty percent Jewish in 1920--to approximately twenty percent.
• Propaganda and Negative Stereotypes: Anti-Semitic publications, like Henry Ford's "The Dearborn Independent," which had a wide circulation, promoted harmful stereotypes and conspiracy theories about Jews. This type of rhetoric fueled the hostility against the Jewish community.
• Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: A revitalized Ku Klux Klan directed hostility towards Catholics and Jews in the 1920s.
• "Great Replacement" Conspiracy Theory: The "Great Replacement" theme, which posited that immigrants, including Jews, were attempting to replace native-born Americans, gained traction and contributed to antisemitic attitudes.
• Christianity's “supersessionism,” also called “replacement theology,” entered the church. First, we need to understand what replacement theology is. Replacement theology teaches that all of God’s covenants and their promises have been stripped from Israel and given to the Gentiles. It teaches that because of Israel’s rebellion against God and their rejection of the Messiah, the predominantly Gentile Church has replaced Israel as God’s chosen people—a new Israel.
  This theology often leads to a spiritualization of the Old and New Testament prophesies regarding the Jewish people. It supports amillennial theology, which teaches that we are now living in the one-thousand-year reign of Christ, where there is no rapture of the Church and no future promises for the nation of Israel.  They decided they are now like the past Jewish people and have no need of Jews today.  Often claimed by later Christians to have originated with Paul the Apostle in the New Testament, supersessionism has formed a core tenet of Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches for the majority of their history.^] Many early Church Fathers—including Justin Martyr and Augustine of Hippo—were supersessionist.  In 1924, the Pope was Pius XI. He was elected in 1922 and reigned until 1939. 
• Rabbinic Judaism rejects supersessionism as offensive to Jewish history.  

I note that immigrants to the USA that were Jewish and Italian had their new communities with delis of each on corners near to each other, and they were friends.  This development of the Pope towards Jews didn't seem to take in reality.  We got along fine.  

• Immigration Restrictions: The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 severely curtailed immigration, including Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe, reflecting the prevailing sentiment of xenophobia and antisemitism. 

Rabbi Kook has become the most famous rabbi we have had in recent centuries. In 1887, at the age of 23,  Kook entered his first rabbinical position as rabbi of Zaumel, Lithuania. Zamelis is a small town in northern Lithuania, 40 km to the north from Pakruojis, near the border with Latvia.(In August 1941, a total of 160 Jews from Žeimelis were murdered by an Einsatzgruppe. The mass execution was perpetrated by Germans and local collaborators.) Looks like his anti-Semitic town never improved from  54 years ago when he had become a rabbi.  

  Between 1901 and 1904, he published three articles which anticipate the philosophy that he later more fully developed in the Land of Israel.  His work as a rabbi had a great thing to do with creating the government,  but as a Chief Rabbi of Israel, sharing with another, a chief Sephardic Rabbi, oversaw the Ashkenazi Jewish belief and practices for Ashkenazi Jews who had spread out all over the world with many languages and foods available.  Israel would need advice. 

These 3 articles demonstrate his early thinking on key themes such as Jewish nationalism, the role of Zionism, and the relationship between religious and secular Judaism.   The Orthodox rabbinic journal Ha-Peles  foreshadowed the philosophical ideas he would later develop more fully in the Land of Israel. The three articles are: 

"Teudat Israel VeLeumioto" (1901):

This essay likely addresses the destiny and national identity of the Jewish people. It can be inferred from other sources that Kook saw Jewish national revival as part of a divine plan.

He saw the return to the Land of Israel as laying the groundwork for ultimate spiritual and messianic redemption.

1. "Etzot MiRahok" (1902):   While specific details of this essay are not provided in the search results, the title suggests advice or insights from a distance.Given the context, it would likely elaborate on his views concerning the unfolding events and ideas related to Jewish nationalism and the return to Zion.

"Afikim BaNegev" (1903):This essay, and the series as a whole, focused on Jewish nationalism.Kook viewed Zionism as a potential source of cultural renaissance.He urged religious Jews to recognize Zionism's positive emphasis on Jewish peoplehood and to engage with it.

He called on secular Zionists to appreciate the value of traditional religious life and to return to its practice.

He stressed the importance of mutual respect and understanding between different groups within the Jewish people, urging them to put aside cynicism and sarcasm. 

In essence, these early articles reveal Rabbi Kook's emerging philosophy that sought to bridge the divide between traditional Judaism and modern ideas, particularly in the context of the growing Zionist movement. He saw the potential for a unified Jewish people and a spiritual renewal connected to the return to the Land of Israel. This inclusive approach, which sought to find the divine spark even in seemingly secular aspects of the Zionist endeavor, would become a hallmark of his later philosophical development. 

 Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (Rav Kook) was involved in governmental affairs, particularly during his time as the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine. He actively engaged with and influenced institutions and officials connected to the British Mandate government. 

Lobbying the British Mandate: Rav Kook lobbied British Mandate institutions regarding issues important to the Jewish community, such as permitting Jewish immigration and securing the rights of Jews to oversee the Western Wall.

Appearing before Commissions: He testified before a commission established to address the matter of the Western Wall, strongly asserting the Jewish people's divine right to the holy site.

Meeting with Officials: He met with important figures like President Calvin Coolidge at the White House during his trip to America. He also addressed government officials in various cities, like Mayor John Hylan of New York City. 

While he wasn't a governmental official in the traditional sense, his position as Chief Rabbi and his strong support for the Zionist cause positioned him to interact with and influence governing bodies. He even advocated for specific legislation, such as supporting a law in Tel Aviv against public Sabbath violation. This shows his willingness to engage directly with governmental processes to advance his vision for the Jewish community and the land of Israel. This is the guidance the new country needed at this time.  If we were to have a state for Jewish people again such as we had over 2,000 years ago, we had to have a semblance of Jewish mores and reasons.  It is not to be just another state.  The Jews'return was something prophesized about in our Torah, our Bible.  At this period, it wasa necessity!  Jews had been the scapegoat for cultures forever, it seemed, and nowwas the time to re-new again.                 

The first Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Mandatory Palestine was Rabbi Yaakov Meir, who served from 1921 to 1939.  Meir was born in Jerusalem in 1856, the son of successful merchant Calev Mercado.  He died May 26, 1939 in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine at age 83.   He was succeeded by Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel, who served from 1939 until the end of the British Mandate in 1948. Yaakov Meir CBE (Hebrew: יעקב מאיר; 1856–1939), was an Orthodox rabbi, and the first Sephardic Chief Rabbi appointed under the British Mandate of Palestine. A Talmudic scholar, fluent in Hebrew as well as five other languages, he enjoyed a reputation as one of Jerusalem's most respected rabbis. 

Sephardis:  When the Romans burned down Jerusalem in the year 70, some Jews escaped to Spain and became the Sephardi Jews.  They were thrown out of Spain in 1492 and had to find new lands, Portugal being the first one to enter, but soon that leader got wind of how to deal with Jews, so they were to leave as well.  It's a miracle that they were able to hold onto their Judaism beliefs and continue our religion, whereas Ashkenazi were almost all wiped out in the Holocaust-WWII of 1939-1945.  Actually, after this, it was hard for these Jews to continue on in some cases.  

Under Turkish rule of the Ottoman Empire, he often interceded with the authorities on behalf of the Jewish community; he also encouraged the construction of new Jewish quarters of Jerusalem, helping establish the new neighborhoods of Ezrat Yisrael, Yemin Moshe, and the Bukharim Quarter. He worked to bring the Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities together, and established an association called Hitachadut composed of Sephardim and Ashkenazim. He helped establish the Sha'ar Zion Hospital in Jaffa in 1891.

Meir was committed to the Revival of the Hebrew language, and together with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Chaim Hirschensohn, and Chaim Kalmi, he co-founded the Safa Brura ("clear language") association, which was created in 1889 to teach and encourage the use of Hebrew. He was a founding member of the Hebrew Language Committee, which was established by Ben-Yehuda in 1890 and was later succeeded by the Academy of the Hebrew Language.                                          

   Out of Holocaust chambers fleeing to Israel in time to fight for its life

After all Jews have gone through, in a world saturated in anti-Semitism, it is admirable that they returned to Israel for a purpose;  a purpose of continuing something they felt was most important to keep on going as well as survival for their own family they hoped to have.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Isaac_Kook