Tuesday 8 July 2014

Spreading the Love

I anticipate  a lot of criticism for daring to invoke the shade of the late and inordinately great Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in reference to the dreadful events unfolding in Israel even as I write.

But nothing daunted!

Rav Kook’, as he became generally known, was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandate Palestine. He was primarily a scholar, mystic and poet but his many interests included “outreach and cooperation between different groups and types of Jews, seeing both the good and bad in each of them”.

I’d like to think, in view of the  flashes of quiet heroism that some Jewish Israelis and their Arab counterparts are displaying in trying to leap the divide between us, that Rabbi Kook’s poetic and prayerful emphasis on universalism is worth highlighting here.

I had been tempted to republish his oft quoted The Fourfold Song of the Soul but have decided instead to use - Rabb Abraham Iaac Kook

“The Glory of All

“I love all;
I cannot but love all:
All the nations.
From my very depth, I want the glory of all,
The perfection of all.
My love to Israel burns more greatly
And is deeper,
But this inner desire spreads out in the force of its love
To all.
I have no need at all to force this feeling of love--
It wells directly from the holy depth of Wisdom
Of the Godly soul”.

(Arpelei Tohar 22, quoted in Mishnato Shel Harav Kook, p. 307 – with acknowledgements to the translator, Yaacov David Shulman).

© Natalie Wood (08 July 2014)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Y'know, that's cute. I mean, y'know, using that to show universalism. Wouldn't it be lovely, indeed - yet "my love TO Israel burns more greatly and is deeper" which is only natural, but hardly universalism. However, of course we can care about and love others. The only thing is, that works when you're on the same page as the others, and not when the other has an agenda which was offered by the Mufti of Jerusalem to Hitler in 1936, under the name Jihad, and rebranded, so to speak, as "the final solution." We'll never know if Rav Kook zz"l might have added context to this, since he passed away in 1935, before the final solution was in full swing.