From the Well of Kindness:
Teachings of Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook
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.
Teachings of Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook
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:
a new translation of Orot Hateshuvah
“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 in paperback or as a Kindle book.
a new translation of Orot Hateshuvah
“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 in paperback or as a Kindle book.
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....
WHO IS 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.
Rabbi 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.”
Rabbi 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.
Rabbi 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.
Rabbi 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, Rabbi 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.”
This site presents selections of the brilliant and powerful ideas of this magnificent philosopher and mystic on a broad range of topics. It is the largest collection of Rav Kook teachings in English on the Internet. To find out more about the translator, Yaacov David Shulman, click here.
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
More Rav Kook ResourcesOrot--the website of Rabbi Bezalel Naor
Rav Kook Torah--the website of Rabbi Chanan Morrison Rav Moshe Weinberger--audio lectures Art and Rav Kook--audio discussion Film about Rav Kook Rare Film Clip of Rav Kook New! Lights of Teshuvah: a translation of Orot Hateshuvah “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 “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.” —Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb “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” —Rabbi Chanan Morrison |
Lights of Teshuvah:
a new translation of Orot Hateshuvah Available now in paperback or as a Kindle book. |