I didn't read the book so I can't comment. But I hope to...
Marc B. Shapiro. Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New: The Unique Vision of Rav Kook. London: Littman, 2025. xvi, 212 pp.
REVIEWED BY RABBI BEZALEL NAOR
The title of the book comes from a line in one of Rav Kook’s letters that has become emblematic: “The old will be renewed, and the new will be sanctified.” (In Hebrew it rhymes: “Ha-yashan yithadesh, ve-he-hadash yitkadesh.”)[1] The photo image chosen for the front cover bears out this saying. We see Rav Kook, the religious leader of the New Yishuv, seated alongside Rav Yosef Hayyim Sonnenfeld, the religious leader of the Old Yishuv of Jerusalem. Rav Sonnenfeld remains black-and-white, while Rav Kook has been color-enhanced.
The author of the present study of Rav Kook’s writings comes well-prepared for the task. He “cut his teeth” on the complex figure of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, whose legacy was so divided, that at his funeral, there literally broke out an altercation as to where the great man should be buried. (Finally, his alma mater, the Slabodka Yeshivah, reinvented in Jerusalem as the “Hebron Yeshivah,” won out.) The appearance years ago of Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg (1884-1966) established Professor Shapiro’s credentials as a researcher of twentieth-century rabbinic authorities. (Rabbi Weinberg was the subject of Shapiro’s doctoral dissertation at Harvard under the late Isadore Twersky, of blessed memory.) As in the previous study, what drew Shapiro to Rav Kook is his relevance to Modern Orthodoxy.
To say that Marc B. Shapiro is extremely well read, does not do him justice. Anyone who has followed over the years his regular contributions to Seforim blog, will vouch for his encyclopedic knowledge. He brings this erudition to the present volume. To evoke the categories of Isaiah Berlin, Shapiro is a “fox,” as opposed to a “hedgehog.” In the author’s own words:
What I do not explore (and on which others more qualified than myself have had much to say) are the typical questions that intellectual historians ask about important writers, such as which earlier texts influenced them, which sources they had access to, how systematic their exposition was, and so forth.[2]
The book is divided topically. I too shall discuss various thought clusters, at times taking the liberty of floating some ideas of my own.
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Referring to the differing conceptions of the universe of Ptolemy versus Copernicus and Galileo, Rav Kook asserts that the Torah speaks to men in the scientific idiom of their age.[3] (In a footnote, Shapiro juxtaposes my own teacher, Rabbi Shlomo Fisher’s interpretation of the verse in Zechariah 4:10 in light of the astrophysics of the prophet’s day.)[4]
It seems reasonable to apply this thinking to the interpretation of Joseph’s dream, in which the sun and the moon and eleven stars bow down to him. In the old Ptolemaic conception, the universe is geocentric, the sun revolving around the earth (as opposed to the heliocentric universe of Copernicus, in which the earth revolves around the sun). Lest we entertain any doubts, Jacob clinches matters when he asks rhetorically: “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers come to bow down to you, to the earth (artsah)?”[5] Though left unstated in Joseph’s narration, Jacob grasped that his son had envisioned himself as the earth, with the heavenly bodies bowing to him.
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Rav Kook very much viewed himself as a defender of the faith. In this role, he gained much guidance from Maimonides. As a rosh yeshivah who was a devoted disciple of Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, confided to me: “Rambam’s Moreh Nevukhim (Guide of the Perplexed) is a hora’at sha‘ah (literally, “a ruling of the hour,” or temporary ruling) from which one can take away many other hora’ot sha‘ah.”
The challenge to traditional faith in Maimonides’ generation was the Aristotelian theory of the pre-eternity of the universe. In the Guide, Maimonides showed a way how Judaism could survive this onslaught, by accommodating Aristotle’s conception. If need be, Genesis could be reinterpreted to conform to this world-view. (Today, several works by Orthodox Jewish scientists, such as Nathan Aviezer, have demonstrated how much more congenial the Big Bang theory is to Bereshit.)
In Rav Kook’s day (as today) Judaism was under attack by Bible criticism. The notion that the Torah is human in origin, undermines the traditional belief in Torah min ha-Shamayim (Torah from Heaven). (While Rabbi Joseph Baer Soloveitchik of Boston wrote that he was not bothered by Bible criticism, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s mentor in Berlin, Rabbi Hayyim Heller, did pitched battle with the Bible critics from Wellhausen on.) In a stroke of bold theology, Rav Kook proposed that observance of Torah and commandments could—and should—survive the erosion of the traditional axiom of Torah min ha-Shamayim. Rav Kook enunciated a new principle upon which to base adherence to the Law: kabbalat ha-’ummah (the acceptance of the nation) or haskamat ha-’ummah (the agreement of the nation). It does not matter how this corpus that we call Torah has come about. Once the nation of Israel has accepted upon itself the Torah’s authority, it is forever binding on all faithful sons and daughters of Israel. (Rivkah Schatz-Uffenheimer threw out the suggestion at a symposium that the keyword in Rav Kook’s journal entry should not be read as “emunah” [faith] but “amanah” [treaty], implying that the Torah is legally binding as a treaty or covenant.)[6]
This bold suggestion was put forth by Rav Kook in the very first work that he published in Erets Yisrael, Eder ha-Yekar (Jerusalem, 1906). On my last visit to my teacher, Rabbi Shlomo Fisher, in his home in Jerusalem, he pointed out to me that he had referenced this passage in Eder ha-Yekar in a footnote to his Beit Yishai: Derashot. (It follows on the heels of a lengthy halakhic discussion of kabbalat ha-rabbim in the responsa of Rivash [Rabbi Isaac bar Sheshet], no. 399, who, in turn, quotes Ramban [Rabbi Moses Nahmanides] in Mishpat ha-Herem.)[7]
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Apropos of Torah from Heaven (Torah min ha-Shamayim), Shapiro quotes a paradoxical musing of Rav Kook:
There is disbelief that is like an affirmation of faith, and an affirmation of faith akin to disbelief. How so? A person affirms the doctrine of Torah from Heaven, but those “heavens” are pictured by him in such strange forms that nothing of true faith remains.
And how might disbelief be accounted as affirmation of faith? A person denies Torah from Heaven, but his denial is based only on what the person has absorbed of the form of “heaven” pictured in brains full of vain, empty thoughts. And [the disbeliever] maintains that the Torah has a source higher than that, and begins to find its foundation in the greatness of man’s spirit, in the depth of his ethics and the height of his wisdom.[8]
While Shapiro is correct that the pensée quoted refers specifically to those who would humanize the Torah, I think that it may have been inspired as well by Maimonides’ important statement in the eighth of his thirteen fundamentals of faith:
The eighth fundamental is Torah min ha-Shamayim (Torah from Heaven). And that is, that we believe that all of the Torah that is found in our hands today, is the Torah that was given to Moses, and that it is all from the mouth of the Almighty, which is to say that it was conveyed to [Moses] in a manner that is called figuratively “speech,” and none know the quality of that conveyance but the one (peace be unto him) to whom it was conveyed.[9]
Later, in the Guide, Maimonides would revisit this theme of the de-corporealization of divine speech:
Some of them believe that He (may He be exalted) gives a command to a particular thing by means of speech similar to our speech—I mean through the instrumentality of letters and sounds—and that in consequence, that thing is affected.[10]
Perhaps that is what Rav Kook had in mind when he wrote that the individual in question “maintains that the Torah has a source higher than that.”
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On the subject of heresy, Shapiro finds Rav Kook’s most significant halakhic statement to be the following:
Although a mistake in [comprehending] divine matters causes much damage, the essence of the damage that results from distorted concepts is not actualized to the point of killing a person’s soul unless it coalesces into actions, or [unless] it at least descends into [forming] viewpoints and feelings that in the end will necessarily reveal themselves in actions. But as long as the [mistake] remains in its abstract form, there is no essential uprooting.[11]
Shapiro wishes that Rav Kook’s son, Rav Zevi Yehudah Kook (1891-1982) would have published this text during his lifetime. “We might have been spared some of the heresy-hunting in the Modern Orthodox/religious Zionist world … In sum, this passage has enormous theological and halakhic significance, and deserves to be much better known.”[12]
Surprisingly, a possible reverberation of Rav Kook’s stance comes from his erstwhile protégé, Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner:
Ikh volt nit gepaskent oif emetzer az er iz an apikoros seiden Ikh volt gezehn a rei’usa in zein mitsvos ma‘asiyos. Khotsh afilu apikorsus iz nit tolui in ma‘asim, ober malle vos a mensh redt. Er alein gloibt nisht vos er redt.[13]
(I wouldn’t judge someone an apikorus [heretic] unless I saw some deficiency in his [observance of] practical commandments. Even though apikorsut does not depend on actions, what a person speaks is of little consequence. He himself does not believe what he speaks.)
Though Rabbi Hutner’s statement sounds somewhat whimsical, the thrust is that actions speak louder than words.
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Sometimes Shapiro’s discussions take us far afield, which is not to say that they are any less fascinating. For example, the author points out that there is no precedent for Meiri’s contention that a hora’at sha‘ah, an ad hoc ruling of the Sanhedrin, must be backed up by an original derashah, an interpretation of Scripture.[14] I humbly submit that Meiri’s novelty may have been inspired by the sugya (b. Shabbat 87a, Yevamot 62a): “Three things Moses did on his own cognition, and the Holy One (blessed be He) agreed with him.” In each instance, Moses was supposed to have substantiated his innovation with a derashah. Maharal of Prague probed the problematic of the sugya in his super-commentary to Rashi, Gur Aryeh: “I do not know how to reconcile the Talmud’s question, ‘What was [Moses’] derash?’ He added a day on his own cognition, so why does the Talmud ask, ‘What is the derashah?’”[15]
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For the record, I must say that I was chagrined by the treatment (or the lack thereof) of the subject of Lo tehonem.
The prohibition of Lo tehonem (Deuteronomy 7:2) was interpreted by the sages in three different ways: Lo titen lahem haniyah ba-karka‘ (do not grant them a parcel of land in Erets Yisrael); lo titen lahem hen (do not compliment them); and lo titen lahem matnat hinam (do not give them a complimentary gift).[16]
Professor Shapiro is appalled, and perhaps rightly so, by the ways in which he sees the prohibition applied in contemporary Centrist Orthodox society.[17] His litany takes its cue from Haym Soloveitchik’s Rupture and Reconstruction. Shapiro laments the fact that book learning has supplanted mimesis. I have no problem with that. But in a work devoted to the teachings of Rav Kook, one would have expected a robust discussion of Rav Kook’s unique contribution to this particular halakhah.
Rav Kook reasoned that just as the prohibition of giving a complimentary gift is inapplicable when the recipient does not worship idolatry,[18] by the same logic, the prohibition of granting land in Erets Yisrael to a non-Jew does not apply if the prospective landowner is not an idolater. This legal loophole enabled Rav Kook to sell land to a monotheistic Muslim for the duration of the Sabbatical year.[19]
Of course, Rav Kook’s heter mekhirah aroused considerable controversy. Notably, Rabbi Abraham Isaiah Karelitz (known as the Hazon Ish, after the title of his work) objected to Rav Kook’s permission and maintained that Lo tehonem was indeed being violated by that sale.[20]
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While Marc B. Shapiro does not claim to be the last word on Rav Kook’s irreducibly complex system (who can make that claim?), he has certainly succeeded in presenting a thought-provoking work, one that will irk some to no end, while providing others with desperately needed spiritual succor.
[1] Iggerot ha-Rayah 1, 214.
[2] Shapiro, viii.
[3] Eder ha-Yekar, 37-38; Shapiro, 43. Cf. Kevatsim mi-Ketav Yad Kodsho 1, 133.
[4] Shapiro, 44-45, n. 56; Rabbi Shlomo Fisher, Beit Yishai: Derashot (Israel, 2004), 361, n. 4.
[5] Genesis 37:10.
[6] Rivkah Schatz-Uffenheimer in Yovel Orot, ed. Binyamin Ish-Shalom and Shalom Rosenberg (Jerusalem, 1988), 353. Schatz was reading from a manuscript later published in Kevatsim mi-Ketav Yad Kodsho 1, 133.
Cf. Nehemiah 10:1: “And for all this we make a covenant (amanah), and write [it]; and our princes, our Levites, and our priests, set their seal unto it.”
[7] Eder ha-Yekar, 39; Rabbi Shlomo Fisher, Beit Yishai: Derashot, 126, end n. 3: “Afterwards, I found the basic fundamental of kabbalat Kelal Yisrael upon themselves in S[efer] Eder ha-Yekar.”
[8] Shemonah Kevatsim 1:633; Shapiro, 83.
[9] Introduction to Mishnah, Sanhedrin, chap. 10 (Perek Helek), Kafah edition, 143, column b.
[10] Pines translation, Guide of the Perplexed II, 12 (280). This sentence may very well have been intended as a slap in the face to the anonymous author of Sefer Yetsirah.
[11] Shemonah Kevatsim 1:30; Shapiro, 72.
[12] Shapiro, 73.
[13] Rabbi Yitzhak Alster, ‘Olat Yitzhak, vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 2005), 270. And see vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 2003), 188.
[14] Rabbenu Menahem ha-Me’iri, Beit ha-Behirah, Sanhedrin 17a; Shapiro, 108, n. 77.
[15] Rabbi Judah ben Bezalel Löw of Prague, Gur Aryeh, Exodus 19:15, s.v. hosif Moshe yom ehad mi-da‘ato.
[16] b. ‘Avodah Zarah 20a.
Shapiro (123) cites two of the three interpretations: not to give a present, or compliment, to non-Jews. He omits not entitling them to land in Erets Yisrael. The author is in good company. Rashi (Deuteronomy 7:2) also lists but two of three: not giving a compliment and not granting land. Why Rashi omits the prohibition of gift-giving, is speculated by Rabbi Abraham Bacrat Halevi in his super-commentary, Sefer ha-Zikaron (Livorno, 1845; photo-offset Jerusalem, 1968), Va-Ethanan, 86b.
Maimonides (Hil. ‘Avodah Zarah 10:1) has yet a fourth interpretation of Lo tehonem (not to have compassion on them), based on the Targum. See Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel Charlop, Torat ha-Hof Yamim: Sefer Zikaron (New York, 1985), 235a, 239b; and Rabbi Joseph Kafah’s note to Sefer ha-Mitsvot, negative commandment 50 (206-7, n. 61).
[17] Shapiro, 123-126.
[18] “Rav Yehudah sent a gift to Abidarna on their pagan holiday. He said: ‘I know that he does not worship idolatry.’ … Rava sent a gift to Bar Sheshakh on their pagan holiday. He said: ‘I know that he does not worship idolatry’” (b. ‘Avodah Zarah 64b-65a).
[19] See Mishpat Kohen, nos. 58 and 63, and the endnotes of the author’s son, Rav Zevi Yehudah Hakohen Kook. Rabbi David Cohen has made the point that in no. 63, Rav Kook relied on a censored version of Rabbi Joel Sirkes’ animadversion to the Tur, Hoshen Mishpat 249:2, which would have allowed presenting a gift to non-idolatrous Muslims. However, in the uncensored version of the Bayit Hadash (BaH), there are no such grounds for permission. See Rabbi David Cohen, Gevul Ya‘bets: Kuntresim ve-Sugyot (Brooklyn, 1986), 196, s.v. Lo tehonem; idem, He-‘Akov le-Mishor (Brooklyn, 1993), 23-24.
A close reading of Maimonides, Hil. ‘Avodah Zarah 10:4 yielded a different result: Sale of land in Erets Yisrael, and paying a compliment to non-Jews, are permitted, if the recipients are not idolaters. Gift-giving to non-Jews is prohibited even when the recipients do not worship idols. (This is in conformity to the opinion of Rabbi Judah in ‘Avodah Zarah 20a, “to a ger [toshav], as a gift, and to a gentile, as a sale.”) See Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel Charlop, 242a-243a. In his youth in Jerusalem, Rabbi Charlop studied under both Rabbi Yitzhak Yeruham Diskin and Rav Kook.
See also Rabbi Moses of Coucy, Sefer Mitsvot Gadol, Part One, negative commandment 45: “And it was on this, that Rabbenu Moshe [i.e., Rabbi Moses Maimonides] relied [in order] to be a physician to the Ishmaelites [i.e., non-idolatrous Muslims] in the Land of Egypt.” See there Berit Moshe, n. 9, quoting Rabbi Joseph Karo, Kesef Mishneh, Hil. ‘Avodah Zarah 10:2.
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Alternatively, Rav Kook attempted to make a case for according the “Ishmaelite” the status of “ger toshav” (resident alien) based on several statements of Rashi throughout the Talmud that a ger toshav need only accept not to worship idols. See also Rashi, Deuteronomy 14:21. (Unlike Maimonides, who defines ger toshav as one who accepts all seven Noahide commandments.) See Rabbi Yitzhak Arieli, ‘Eynayim le-Mishpat, Sanhedrin 96b.
This leniency was joined to Rabad’s contention that some aspects of ger toshav obtain even today when the Jubilee year is defunct. See my edition of Hasagot ha-Rabad le Mishneh Torah (Jerusalem, 1985), Hil. ‘Avodah Zarah 10:6 (p. 45), s.v. Eini mashveh lo bi-yeshivat ha-’arets, and Hil. Issurei Bi’ah 14:8; and B. Naor, Ba-Yam Derekh (Jerusalem, 1984), 81-83.
[20] “There are no grounds to allow selling to a gentile in order to remove the sanctity of the Sabbatical year; and, on the contrary, the prohibition of the Sabbatical year nowadays is rabbinic, while the sale is a Torah prohibition on a par with terefah, and meat and milk, et cetera” (Hazon Ish, Shevi‘it, 24:4). Paraphrased in Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, Shemitah ke-Hilkhatah (B’nei Berak, 1979), 100.
After presenting the case for allowing the sale of land in Erets Yisrael to “Ishmaelites,” based on Maimonides (who vouched for their monotheism), Rabbi Sternbuch opines that nonetheless, concern lest they exert a negative theological influence upon the inhabitants of the land precludes their permanent dwelling. (See Hil. ‘Avodah Zarah 10:4; Hazon Ish, Shevi‘it 24:3.)
