In its sitting on Wednesday, the Knesset Plenum voted to approve in preliminary reading the Commemoration of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook Bill (Commemoration of His Life and Achievements), 2023, sponsored by MK Ohad Tal (Religious Zionism) and a group of MKs. In the vote, 46 Members of the Knesset supported the bill, versus 10 who opposed it.
In the explanatory notes to the bill, it is stated: ” Rabbi Kook does not belong to just one sector of the population. His image and legacy belong to the entire people of Israel, and the entire people should be exposed to the great wealth of philosophy, literature, Halachic rulings and Jewish renaissance in Rabbi Kook’s legacy. The bill is designed to bring the youth and the general public closer to the values of Zionism and the Jewish religion, as part of the process of instilling Jewish-Israeli heritage and commemorating the life and legacy of the nation’s founders.”
The National Library of Israel wrote about Rabbi Kook: “Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook (HaRaAYaH, 1865–1935) was the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel. He is considered one of the most original and influential Jewish religious thinkers of the 20th century as well as one of the fathers of religious Zionism. (…)
“The purest righteous do not complain about evil; rather, they increase justice.
They do not complain about godlessness, but increase faith. They do not complain about ignorance, but increase wisdom.” (Rabbi Kook)
Rabbi Kook was born in 1865 in the town of Grīva in Latvia to a Lithuanian father and a mother whose family were followers of Chabad Hasidism. (…) In 1904, Rabbi Kook, who was an avid Zionist, accepted an offer to serve as Rabbi of the city of Jaffa and the new farming settlements, and arrived in the Land of Israel on the 28th of Iyar that same year. (…) While on a visit to Europe, the outbreak of World War I forced Rabbi Kook to spend three years in London. While there, he served as rabbi of a synagogue and was active in promoting the Balfour Declaration. (…) Rabbi Kook advocated the establishment of a “Torah of the Land of Israel” that would combine halakha and aggadah (Talmudic folklore and wisdom).”