Teachings in English — translated by Yaacov David Shulman
Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook: Mystic, Philosopher, Visionary
"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."
About Rav Kook
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak 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.
This site presents the largest collection of Rav Kook teachings in English on the Internet.
From the well of kindness, 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.
Books in Translation
Eight Journals: Journal One
Shemonah Kevatzim — Translated by Yaacov David Shulman
The motherlode of Rav Kook's teachings — his private journals written over fifteen years, revealing unpublished teachings and preserving readings changed by his editors. 621 pages of unmediated access to his soaring mind and soul.
Available on Amazon (paperback, $24.95)
From the Well of Kindness
Teachings by Rav Kook on a wide variety of topics: creativity, universalism, Torah, prayer, people of Israel, land of Israel, poetry and beauty, teshuvah, imagination, souls, intelligence, feeling, kindness, and more….
Available in paperback or as a Kindle book.
Lights of Teshuvah
"In this, Rav Kook's most philosophically developed work, his most significant innovation is that teshuvah ('return') is not connected to sin per se but is comprised of man's returning to himself, returning to his source."
— Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik
Available now in paperback or as a Kindle book.
What Scholars Say
Yaacov David Shulman is a master translator who is able to capture the language, the poetry and the beauty of Rav Kook's Hebrew. Since Rav Kook is often very difficult to read in the Hebrew original, even by people who are very literate in Hebrew, having access to this material in English will be very useful.
More accurate and closer to the original Hebrew than Ben Zion Bokser's 1978 translation. More importantly, the English flows and is eminently readable…. Shulman's translation … is clear and smooth; he even manages to convey some of the poetry of the original text.
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