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Hello and welcome to the New Books Network Jewish Studies channel. I'm your host, Dora Roussi, Executive Director of Unity Through Diversity Institute, where we explore the future of our heritage. Please see our activities on unitytdiversity.com. Today, we're really delighted to speak with Professor Mark B. Shapiro about his third book, I believe, with Littman Press, Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New, the Unique Vision of Rav Kook, published in 2025.
Welcome, Professor Shapiro, and thank you for joining us here today. Happy to be here. I'll just say fourth book. Fourth book. Oh, my apologies. Thank you for correcting me. So that's a good... segue into why don't you introduce yourself a little bit and your research. Okay, well, I'm a professor at the University of Scranton, and most of my research focuses on Jewish religious history.
And, you know, Riff Cook, of course, is very important in terms of that religious history, his thought. So that's what really turned me on to him. Excellent. Do you want to mention your other books so that we get a feel of...
Well, my first book was a study of Rabbi Achiel Yaakov Weinberg. He was an important 20th century German really for Lithuania, but then in Germany, halakhic authority, really for the modern Orthodox, I would say the most important halakhic authority probably in the second half of the 20th century. Then I wrote a book on the reception of Maimonides' 13 principles. The book before this current one was about how Orthodox Judaism rewrites its history.
through censorship and various ideas that used to be acceptable, no longer are acceptable, that sort of thing. And now it's Ruff Cook. And I'll just mention that... I mean, this is a very different book on Riff Cook than most people are used to. Most people think of Riff Cook, they think about Zionism. I don't deal with that really at all. This book focuses on areas that really can appeal to everyone, even if Zionism is not your focus. Many of these issues I deal with were suppressed.
for a long time, so it's sort of, I guess you would say, the aspects of Rav Kook, not the conventional, well-known aspects of Rav Kook, but aspects of Rav Kook that I think are significant and are important and felt myself drawn to, and that's why I wrote the book. Excellent. So I'm going to expand upon why you wrote the book a bit, because I'm going to bring in a quote that you put in page six. And I think maybe that'll help you expand as well. So you bring a quote from Rob Cook that says...
What is going on now in the world, since there is no one, and in particular no Ludwig scholar, who wants to see what is taking place at present in the world? Is that a reason why I should also not see? No, I'm not enslaved to the masses. I walk in my own way in the righteous path and look ahead. So like I said, I think that's a context for what you were starting to say, and if you can even expand upon that a bit.
Well, until the late 1990s, the only writings we had from a cook were what we call the authorized writings, put together by his son and one of his major students. in the late 1990s of our Well, it's more than one volume. It's called The Shmona Kvatsim, The Eight Notebooks of Rav Kook Appeared. And that was the uncensored writings from Rav Kook's own pen. without going through his editors, the gatekeepers, as it were. And I purchased it when I came out and started reading it.
I mean, these are mostly small jottings. Sometimes they go on for even a page. Every thought that came to his head, he expresses himself. So I started reading that, and I was hooked. And in the subsequent years, a number of similar volumes have appeared. That is, Ruff Cook, his own words. not put in any larger context, put together as a volume. And you see he goes from one issue to another. So as I'm reading it, I'm finding material.
that I think really speaks not just to me, but to the Orthodox world today, modern Judaism. All sorts of matters that we didn't know about because, as I said, these writings were actively suppressed because they were thought to be too radical. We can maybe talk a little bit about why they were suppressed. And as I said, I thought... I could put together a number of themes from of Cook's writings, mostly his new writings, but you find echoes of this in his old writings as well.
And that's the book, I guess, that came out of that. Yeah, and I definitely want to talk about why it was oppressed and how it was, but let's take a step back first. Because... I'm sure many of our listeners know who Rav Kook is, but I think at least the small biography is important at this point. Give us, you know, time frame, place, etc.
Rav Kuk is born in a traditional rabbinic society, I guess you would say, in 1865 in Eastern Europe in the Russian Empire. He attends the great yeshiva of Olazhin. marries into rabbinic elite family, becomes rabbi of a couple small towns in the Russian Empire. And in 1904, journeys to the land of Israel. There's a new... settlement in the city of Jaffa, and they meet a rabbi. And, I mean, you already had in the land of Israel the four classic cities, Jerusalem, Avron.
This is the new Yishuv, new people coming on Aliyah, and they meet a rabbi with a different vision. And Rav Kook goes to the land of Israel, and he remains there until his death in 1935. And most people know Rav Kook because of his... exposure to this new approach that is this new understanding you have Jews who are not religious Reject religion even and yet they are sacrificing themselves for the Jewish people for the land of Israel
How are you supposed to understand this? Can you just regard them as you do the assimilationists in, let's say, in Paris and London? or the Jews who remain in Vilna, the Bundes. I mean, these are people in the land of Israel. They could have gone to America. They could have gone to South Africa. They went to the land of Israel under very difficult circumstances. And Rav Kook's great vision was to understand that this is something special, even though these people outwardly are rejecting Judaism.
they're responding to a call, a call in their soul, and they're returning the Jewish people to history, as it were, when God is summoning us to return to the land of Israel. And they have a role to play. The religious, of course, have a role to play, but these so-called irreligious Jews... also have a role to play. And that really most people know Riff Cook because of his embrace.
of the religious, of seeing the Zionist movement as a call from God, but there is so much more about Rav Kook. And even before he comes to the land of Israel, he wrote an enormous amount. He even wrote A Guide of the Perplex. Before he comes to the land of Israel, I'll call it Linvuch Eador, explaining how Judaism should respond to all the new challenges, just like Maimonides, almost a thousand years before, responded to the medieval challenges.
And Rav Kook is the chief rabbi of the land of Israel, the British position of chief rabbinate, great halakhic authority. and one whose influence has grown enormously, not only after his death, but certainly in the last 30, 40 years. He is without question the most significant rabbi for the religious Zionist world in the last century. And I want to make sure you mentioned his son. So I want to make sure that we know we're focusing on.
Yes, they call him the Rav. In America, they call Rav Salvechik the Rav. The Rav is Rav Kuk. That's Rav Kuk the father. He has a son, a very great son as well. Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kuk. who succeeded him as head of the American Zarate Shiva, but was not really an independent thinker in his own line. He more was like the conduit. of his father's ideas and his great dispute.
as to whether he has limited Rav Kook's ideas in one direction, namely a direction of nationalism focused on the land of Israel. What about all the other ideas Rav Kook spoke about? It wasn't in his interest, let's put it this way, to speak about those issues and to publish them. Right, and I'm not sure the yeshiva went in that way either. But let's go back to the Rav, as we're calling him now, Rav Cook.
Renewing the Old is the name of the book. And you were talking now about renewal and even renewing Maura Nebuchadnezzar, The Guide to the Perplexed. And it very much sums up Rav Kook with it, even though his training was very much in the Ashkenazi traditional Orthodox world. And yet he still calls out a need to renew and reevaluate. So you were talking a little bit before about his pioneering. I don't know if that's a word you would use. I used it.
But you talk about the fear of sin being replaced with the fear of thought in the past two centuries, and that it's a danger. Can you address that and talk about even how it might apply to us today as well? Although Rav Cook comes out of the traditional rabbinic world, the great yeshiva, the Valajan yeshiva, he saw that there were problems with the traditional yeshiva curriculum. In fact, even when he was a student there, he did not...
follow the traditional curriculum. He engaged in all sorts of other pursuits, but he saw a problem and he wrote about it. You know, the focus on Talmudic study, Talmudic and Lachuk study to the exclusion of all else. That would work for some people, and it's beneficial, but it's going to have disastrous consequences for others, he thought. Many people are attracted.
to other areas of Torah study, not just Talmud. I think this is a matter, incidentally, that the religious Zionist world very much recognizes today. And Rav Kook speaks about how we need a broadened curriculum. Obviously, you're going to have... community scholars, whose focus is going to be on this. We need great rabbis.
But what about everyone else? Rav Kook sees, as he says, it's a big reason for the rejection of traditional Judaism among the young is that they were not given any opportunities in traditional settings. For other aspects of Torah learning, we're not even talking about secular studies here, a broad perspective. I mean, there's traditions of philosophy, of Kabbalah.
And so this, he thinks, is first of all very important. Second of all, he notes that when you have a lachic question, If someone does not know the sources, he's going to have to decide stringently, because he doesn't know all the different opinions, so he has to be safe. Rav Kook says it's the same thing when it comes to matters of Jewish thought. Many people who write about this, and he's referring to great rabbis here, are on...
They don't know the history of Jewish thought. They don't know the great medieval thinkers, and therefore they're, quote, stringent in matters of Jewish thought. What do I mean by that? They present a very limited view of what Jewish dogma is. Because they don't know all the different options. And that too...
drives people away because you have stringency. So for instance, you have someone who's drawn to certain ideas, and when the rabbis say that it's forbidden, that's heresy, well, from his perspective, that is the young person, if this is heresy to think these things, well, they might as well stop up during Shabbos and Kastras, because I'm already a heretic. So Raph Cook sees this.
as he calls it, in matters of Jewish thought, as also driving people out. And his response, of course, is you have to broaden the tent of, and he doesn't say exactly what he's referring to, but if you know his other writings. You can extrapolate to that. So for instance, he writes elsewhere about evolution.
You have rabbis saying that to accept the idea of evolution is automatically heresy. And Rav Kook's approach is that, no, we don't say that. We have to assume that maybe this theory is correct, and how then can we understand Torah in accordance with it?
But you can imagine, you tell someone who's convinced by new theories of evolution that this is heresy, well, if the person's convinced by evolution, now he's told he's a heretic, there's no reason for him to remain in the Jewish community anymore.
So, Lev Cooks is speaking in terms of a broadening, not just of a curriculum, but a broadening of how we understand acceptable Jewish ideas, and he even throws in, for good measure, The idea that it's time to once again, now that we're entering history, We used to be in it, then we were put in the ghetto, now we're re-entering it, that even secular studies should be something we're not going to be afraid of, and we can involve ourselves.
And you've touched upon a whole bunch of different things, but we're going to unpack it a little bit. First, I have to say that... When I was a long time ago, when I did my year after high school in Israel, I had a friend who was in a yeshiva there, and he said he has to stay for a second year because he wasted the whole year learning Tanakh. Just you're learning the Bible. And it sounds very much along these lines like Rob Cook would have a problem with saying that unless you see it.
And obviously the Bible is the essence, but it is true that in traditional societies, you didn't have someone who's an expert in Tanakh. You had a Tamar Chacham. You're not a scholar. Today, we have this idea that you can be, in the religious Zionist world, that is, you can be an expert in Tanakh. They have Tanakh conferences. Rav Kook, of course, believed in intensive focus on Tanakh, intensive focus on philosophy. We have curriculums that he discussed.
So it's a different understanding now why his own yeshiva never actually went in this direction and why Rav Kook himself. For all these high-flowed ideas of how to revive the curriculum, when he actually establishes yeshiva, he never really moved in that direction. He kept it much more traditional. He expanded it a little.
with the study of Tanakh and what they call Emunah. But, you know, if you look at his earlier writings, you would think it would be a very different place. That's a question in and of itself. as to why the reality was never the same as his vision. Perhaps he saw that it was a bridge too far, that Ari Shvat, a scholar in Israel, has written with regard to academic Jewish studies, which Ruf Cook also deals with.
That when he established the yeshiva, he saw that he has to put a focus on the land of Israel, on Emunah, that these ideas that he thought were not yet ready for it. Maybe the generation isn't yet ready for it, but he did. recommend to certain special students of his to move in those directions, but he did not adopt it as any mass movement, and in his yeshiva, it remained mostly a traditional yeshiva. It's not you! Actually, it is you. Endless onboarding. Constant IT bottlenecks.
enough. We need a platform that just We've met someone new. and it was love at first onboarding. They're customizable workflows. Digital Cloud 9, so no hard feelings. We're moving on The first work platform you'll love to use. So maybe now is the time that we talk a little bit about what you mentioned, the negative reaction that he got and maybe that played into it as well. Maybe you can tell us a little bit.
Well, Rav Kook was a very controversial figure, although what people often don't realize is that the yeshiva world, that is, the Lithuanian yeshiva world, if you want to call it that, in the land of Israel, it was in Rav Kook's camp. In fact, great families like the Auerbach, Shomuzhan Auerbach's family, Revol Yoshev, these were all in Rev. Cook's camp. That doesn't mean they agreed with everything he said, but in terms of who they regarded as the Rav of Jerusalem,
It was Rav Kook. First he was Rav of Jerusalem, then he became chief rabbi. There was a separatist community in the land of Israel of people who refused to accept Rav Kook in its entirety. These were called the Eid HaCharedi. But they were a small minority, and the majority of religious jury of all sorts accepted Refcock. The opponents of Rav Kook really embarked from the time he returned to the land of Israel after World War I or World War I, he was stranded in Europe.
So figure from like 1921 until his death in 1935 in a unbelievable campaign of denunciation. and attacks on Riff Cook like we probably haven't seen. Maybe in history, in terms of its breadth and the years this went on, They saw Rav Kook as someone undermining what they viewed as not just traditional Judaism, but they had a whole conception of remaining in the Gullos.
Until the Messiah comes, and even in the land of Israel, they didn't want Jewish rule, and they were fearful of the irreligious coming in. They wanted to remain in their ghettos. To be fair, Ruff Cook also was saying provocative things like that the young pioneers are essential for redemption, things like that.
So there were terrible attacks on Rav Kook, but most of the Torah world, if you want to call it that, didn't pay this any mind and understood that Rav Kook, even if we don't agree with everything he says, He's one of the great Torah sages of our time, but Rufquid had to deal with these attacks, and we know from his writings how difficult it was for him. In fact...
This has been offered as an explanation as why, if you look at the Shmodekvot scene, Rav Kook often praises himself. He says things like, I see the truth, others don't see it, I'm called upon to speak this truth. Why would he have these reflections?
It's been suggested, I think correctly, that he's constantly being attacked. People are constantly saying that he's departing from tradition. This is his way of affirming to himself that no. What he's doing is what God wants him to do, and it's basically giving him strength in the face of all this incessant assaults. Even physical assaults. People threw things at him. There was even a suggestion that they wanted to murder him. Oh, wow. Brush him off the roof once. That was what was alleged.
Ciao! We know that religion does make people a little crazy. We've seen that across. But this is within the same religion. And one of the things that we do see with him is that... He sees things differently, and you've been talking about the secular studies and that type of a thing. I want to bring another quote just because...
I think it's brilliant. So this is from Rav Kook in your book. When the great person brings himself too fully into the measure of halachic details, whether in learning them or trembling before them, he shrinks and his stature is diminished. then he must do tshuva out of love from the greatness of the souls in order to connect the content of the life of a soul to great and exalted manner. And I think you touched upon this a little bit, but if you can just explain a little more.
We have different types of rabbis, some who focus on Haracha, Jushka, others on Talmud, others on mysticism, philosophy. The question is how to regard someone like Rav Kook. Rav Kook tells us... that when it comes to the nitty-gritty of halachic study and involvement with it, that his soul was not drawn to that. In fact, he feels constricted. He wants to soar. He wants to be in mystical rapture with God.
So he acknowledges that this is difficult for him. In fact, he doesn't even want to, if he could create his own self, he would just be focused on mysticism all day. He can't, because he's a rabbi. and most of his time is going to be spent in halakhic matters, and he has to do that. He even says he's good at it. But that's not where his soul is. That's not where his heart is.
And he writes about the struggle. I mean, Hasidic thinkers have said similar things of being tied to what they call pratin, pratay pratin. You know, you're focused on these little nitty-gritty, and he wants to soar. So you have to follow the halachan. about abandoning it. But he's acknowledging how difficult this is, how problematic it is, and it's something that's not easy for a spiritual person. You tell them they have to pray at this time, not at that time. You have to do all these matters.
Rav Kuk is not halacha command. He doesn't see all these halachic matters as the ultimate. We have to do this, but he is a Gathic man. For him, the ultimate. the more spiritual pursuits, that's what he sees as the height, and that's what he sees as his major focus. So it's a very honest portrayal of a great rabbi. who feels tied down, as it were, by matters that, you know, he really wants to break through if he can, but in a logically acceptable sense.
Right, I wanted to make sure that we stressed that he still stayed within the halacha himself. Yeah, so we're not dealing with what we call antinomianism, that you move beyond that, but you can call it perhaps maybe a soft antinomianism, that, I mean, he says, for instance, that with these... these little, the protein, that you have to be with the Jewish people as a whole. So you're called to be with them. It's not for a person at the higher level. These matters maybe wouldn't be necessary.
You wouldn't need to have, let's say, prayer at certain times if everyone is connected to God all the time. But that's not the way the world is, so the superior man... or a woman, needs to do these things to be part of Kali Yisrael, the Jewish people. But there could be a time, for instance, in the Messianic era where certain things will be changed. Well, Cook says that a number of stringencies that we do are only because we were in the Galilee.
And when we return to the land of Israel, messianic times, let's say, We won't need to do them anymore. But then he adds that there'll be new stringencies that will be added. So Rav Cook understands that there are certain aspects of Judaism. Look, he quotes Maimonides. Maimonides says that... Jewish law is going to have a negative impact on certain individuals, which is true. You could be an agunah, something like that, but that's part of the system.
Magona is a chained woman who doesn't answer for anyone anymore. But you have to look at the system as a whole. So for the people of Cook is speaking about, not everything really is their cup of tea. but for the sake of the Jewish people, they involve themselves in it. But really, their spirituality is not going to be looking at the nitty-gritty of certain halachic matters, but they've, as it were, moved to a higher level.
Some people would reject this whole concept of higher level, but there's a famous character called Joseph Ibn Cosby. He, from Provence, he tells a story that he was at a table once, maybe it's a Shabbos table, I don't know, and the milk spoon falls in the meat or something like that, so he takes it and has to go to the rabbi. And he waited, and the rabbi told him what the law is. And Ibn Cosby is a great philosopher and Bible commentator, and he says, that doesn't bother me that I know that.
Because I'm involved in more advanced things. In other words, the rabbi is just a technician for him. If you want to know what the racha is, you go to the rabbi. But Ibn Kaspi was saying, I'm involved in more spiritual things. It's no different than the Hasidic world, by the way. If you're in the Hasidic world... The Rav, the Posayk, is not the leader. The leader is the Rebbe. The Posayk is the technician. You are not the Racha, but the spiritual leader is the Rebbe.
So Rav Kook in this way is very much reflecting a Hasidic sensibility, that the be-all and end-all is not the arachah. Obviously we have to do that, but you can move. on a higher level, a more spiritual level, even where it's not enough just to do the harachah and study Talmud. For Rav Kook, it means to move into study of mysticism.
and personal connection to God. And I think that kind of leads us into also the concept of the Torah as a literal book versus a book of a God, a type of a guide, because Again, it's different types of thinking. It's a different approach. And often I would think people might think that's almost heretical thinking to take it away as a literal block. Can you explain that a little bit?
Well, as Ruff Cook points out, it says you're not allowed to expound, it says, the creation story publicly. Well, what does that mean, not expound? Everyone can read it. Try it, that's all. So it was Agamara said she can't expound it. So he says, we all understand that there's great secrets and not everything is what appears on the surface. Obviously, the surface level was for some people.
But for people who understand more, there's a much deeper level. And that's why when it came to evolution, where Cook was not troubled. because he understands that this is not a book of literal truth. It's a book of spiritual truth. We're dealing with the creation story. So where to draw the line? When does the Torah become literal as opposed to being only spiritual? Or if Cook was asked this by one of his students who...
precisely one of the students who he encouraged to have training in Semitic studies. His name was Mocha Seidel. And Rav Kook says we don't have an actual answer for that. He says that the intuitive nature of the Jewish people, intuitive feeling, they will come to terms with where... you know, where to draw the line. But Ralph Cook is clear that there are certain parts of the Torah which should not be seen as literal.
at least in its ultimate truth, and need not be seen as literal. So if science teaches us that such an event could have happened the way it's described, this doesn't conserve Cook because the Torah is not teaching us science, it's not teaching us astronomy. When a Torah says the sun rises and sun falls, it doesn't mean that... You know, in a literal sense, it's the sun revolving around the earth, but that's the Torah speaks in a certain way.
And that's sort of Cook's understanding. Unfortunately, he doesn't tell us where to draw the line on this, but he sees more important things than the literal truth of a certain story. So let's go with some other Bible stories because... that you mentioned in the book, that there's a well-known Bible criticism, that the flood story and other Bible stories, including different versions of the creation story, are found in other ancient civilizations.
So how that... seems to play into it also what what does he say is okay that other civilizations have similar or Different narratives. Good question. Rav Cooke mentions that people lost faith in the divinity of the Torah when these texts were published, and now we know that there's Gilgamesh dealing with the flood stories, all these sorts of things. And people regard it as the Torah's version as just another myth, like many of the ancient myths.
And that led them to reject the Torah. Rav Kook is not troubled in the least, for Rav Kook, any similarity between the Torah's teachings and ancient Near Eastern texts are due to the fact that... messages of the Torah and the stories were carried to the people from by pre-Abrahamid prophets as he sees it. As he puts it, can you expect great figures like Shem and Aver or Methuselah that they would not have had an impact on our societies?
Even mitzvot, we have mitzvot that are parallel to things in the ancient world. So Rav Kook adopts the same approach, and he also thinks that... Non-Jews who are spiritual. could come to the same sort of understanding that the Torah does, that these matters help connect you to God. In fact, for a cook, it would have been surprising.
had ancient Near Eastern texts not had any similarities to the Torah. For example, if you didn't have other flood stories, that would be much more problematic. He says, The Taurus version is the correct version. Any other versions have added on legends to it and errors. And for Cook, this applies to all aspects. Even dealing with the stories are not necessarily to be understood in literal fashion. It's the mosaic prophecy that preserves the original message.
before the texts were distorted. But again, that's not necessarily telling you about history, what's historical, what's not. I mean, presumably the fact that you have all the different FUD stories shows you had an event, but does this mean that the FUD was universal, the whole world, as would appear from Peshatah the Torah? That's the sort of thing that people, Rav Kook says that the Torah describes events in accordance with the understanding of the people of the time.
So you could say, for instance, that the people, when it talks about the entire earth, what was the entire earth in their mind? This is an important insight in Rav Kook, that the Torah describes events and occurrences, I should say. astronomical phenomenon, everything in accordance with the generation that it was given.
And that opens the door to all sorts of interpretations, but Rav Kook doesn't take us through the door. He just opens it to us, and it's for others to, I guess, figure out how far to go with it. And that just leads into my next question, because there's an important point that he returns to and that you return to in the book, that we must understand our Judaism in the context of today, in the context of the modern age. right in each generation. So like the point of morality and ethics.
And it's a full chapter of the book, very well explained, and leaving even more to discover. But can you give us a taste, please, maybe in the context of another quote, just because there were some wonderful quotes here. So I hope you'll forgive me for quoting from your book.
The natural people who are not learned have many advantages over the learned ones as their natural intellect and inherent morality have been corrupted by the mistakes that arise from Talmudic learning and through the weakening of strength and anger that comes together with a yoke. of Talmudic learning, which is against most of what I think people think today. So if you can give us a little insight into it. It is indeed dumb.
Ruff Cook develops the notion that there's something called natural morality, Musar TV. And this natural morality is found among religious Jews. It's an intuition. It's a sense. There's two revelations, I guess you would say. There's a revelation of the Torah, and then there's a revelation, an eternal revelation, which comes from God. He's very explicit about this. where Cook gets very radical, subversive, and you can see why this wasn't published in Pirates v. Hudap, is he speaks about
how the simple religious masses, their natural morality is on a more pure, a higher level than the Talmudic scholars. Now, in yeshivas, we're taught that everything comes from the rabbis. It's a one-way street. And here he's saying no. He's saying that the religious masses have something that the rabbis don't have because they've become too intellectual. through their pill-pull and examinations everything is too intellectual
They've lost sight of the pure natural morality, and this can lead them to say things and do things which are actually in opposition to the pure natural morality. So you have dialectic here, because the rabbis still need the religious mass. When you think of religious masses, we have to think of people who are not, today it's very difficult to speak about this because we've all been influenced by the cultures around us.
But imagine your grandparents or something, or people who came from a shtetl who didn't have this outside influence. that they understood what it meant to be Jewish, and sometimes even more than the rabbis in terms of morality. So the masses need the rabbis to instruct them in Acha.
and all sorts of matters, but the rabbis need the masses, because the masses keep them honest, as it were, in terms of, the Gemara speaks about, you can retire at the shirits, you can make something pure, if you know enough, you can... Footforth is an argument through sophistry that even makes something non-kosher kosher. But what's to prevent it? That's the natural morality. In natural morality, you can look at things and say, this is just wrong.
How do you know it's wrong? You know it's wrong because you have a sense that it's wrong. In the book, I gave an example of this. I think that during the sexual abuse scandals that happened, we had cases of where rabbis... leading rabbis sometimes, believed in covering it up. And the religious masses understood that was wrong, and they really forced this issue, forced the change. Now, how can you explain that if you have a traditional Haredi perspective that the rabbis have all the answers?
And by the way, people have used this argument from Rav Kook, which after seeing I wrote, that to explain, you know, the situation in Israel, where you have great Talmudic scholars saying it's forbidden. for people in their communities to be in the army. I mean, that's a terrible thing. And it should be obvious from a natural morality that one population can't require all the sacrifices from another population.
If you adopt Rav Kook's approach, these matters are not problematic, because even great Torah scholars could have a blind spot. How do we know that sexual abuse knew the problems? the devastating impact we know through modern psychology. If your own knowledge is simply in the Torah, you wouldn't come to this conclusion. You just look at it from a halakhic standpoint. And that would, Rav Kook speaks about how sometimes your Talmudic learning...
could push away the natural morality. So the masses help. We need everyone for a cook. Everyone has something to offer. The religious masses, the rabbis, we're all one people. So what do the religious masses come to offer us? They come to make us grounded in natural morality.
So everything has to be, everyone has something to give to the other one. The problem, as I said, is today, it's very difficult to know what is natural morality and what is that we're being influenced by the outside world, their morality. And Rav Kook elsewhere writes that... In the future, the Sanhedrin, their job will be to actualize this natural morality. They'll be able to determine.
what is true morality and what is false morality in terms of legislating, because Rav Kook says that this is going to have practical implications because certain aspects, when we have a conflict in our natural morality and the law, The job of the Sanhedrin is to actualize that, and the Sanhedrin can update Jewish law in accordance with that. Riff Cook's idea is that Jewish law isn't always the ceiling, sometimes it's the floor, and we can develop.
And as we develop in time, certain Jewish laws are no longer relevant. So, for instance, he mentions war, the idea of an optional war. That's all a category. He says that as humanity improves, there won't be a reason for that. We'll move beyond that. Slavery. slavery is something that, yes, it's in the Torah, but natural morality will tell us that it's no longer appropriate. So for Rav Kook, you have to acknowledge that humanity, as you get closer to the Messianic era, you move up.
closer to God and you become more sensitive in certain areas. Now that's going to be very problematic. for many people, because what, a person living in the 21st century is more sensitive to such matters than a great Torah scholar from 200 years ago? Burr of Cook sees, as we come closer to the Messianic era, lights are released. God's holiness. It's not that we're better than the ones in the past generations, but... for whatever reason, at this era, these lights were to be released for us.
And that's how he understands the direction we're moving in. That's how he understands that people today can be deniers of God, even. and yet they do the good for the sake of the good. They'll sacrifice for others. That's a very high level. Years ago, you didn't have that. So Rav Kook sees us move in to a different era, and it's going to be the job of the future Sunhedrin.
you know, adopt these approaches of a natural morality, and that can lead to updating some Jewish law. That is the job of the Sanhedrin, Mananis tells us. When it wishes to, it can update Jewish law. And picking up on that concept of that all the different groups have something to add. You mentioned it in passing before, but the fact that he was very encouraging of even the anti-religious Jews that came to build the land.
Okay. I mean, it's important you mention the encouraging of the anti-Blood Jews who came to build the land. There's this common misconception that people think of Rav Koko as almost like a Chabad Hasid, even though it's Chabad. And that he, look, there's this, you know, holy spark in all Jews, and Rav Kook is not like that. In fact, Rav Kook was challenged by another great rabbi in the land of Israel.
the Ritzbaz, Yaakov Doborovsky, why is he so friendly to the irreligious? After all, there's halachas, we forget about these halachas, most people don't know they exist, and they don't take them into account, but according to Joshua, you cannot give, for example, a Sabbath violator on Aliyah. And yet we ignore all these things because of a different approach that the people don't know any better. We have all these justifications, which is fine.
But Rav Kook explains to this great rabbi, the Rizbaz, that all these things he's saying about the irreligion... And the holiness that they have and all that, he's not saying this about the typical irreligious Jew. He's saying it only about those Jews who have a spark, this holy spark in them. And he calls this a gullot. That is, he's not talking about the assimilationists, the opponents of the Jewish people. He's talking about those.
who show that they are connected to the Jewish people. I mean, if he was around today, we would say, for instance, there's many Jews who, after October 7th, Even though they're not religious in a classic sense, they show they're connected to the Jewish people. They have the Seguah. Those are the ones with Cook speaking about. But on the other hand, he says that those Jews who don't have that...
The halacha categories that speak of them as out of the fold, they apply to them, and today we see it as well. We see Jews who are a luckily Jewish mother, but yet they're in opposition to the Jewish people, in opposition to the state of Israel, doing all sorts of terrible things. Rav Kook is not speaking about that. I think Chabad sees all Jews.
as special, and Ralph Cook absolutely is not that. So yes, he is welcoming to a religious Jews and see them as having an important position in our society. in this pre-Messianic era, and they can offer something that we don't have, but that's only those Jews with Seguah. Those Jews who are traitors to the Jewish people, he's not referring to them, and he's not opening himself to them. The charikarta, he would say, you don't count them to a minion. I mean, that sort of thing.
Now, what do they have to offer us? They have to offer us a lot, but one of the most important things Ruth Cook says is that for 1,800 years in the exile, we forgot that our bodies were holy. For us, Service of God was only through spirituality, not through physicality. But that's a ghost mentality.
Once we return to the land of Israel, we have to serve God as a complete Jew, the way it used to be. And the irreligious Jews, they forgot about Shabbos, etc. We forgot about what it means to be a physical Jew. and we each need each other. But these are only the Jews who are connected to the Jewish people. Those are the ones he's referring to. Right, and with him the connection was the land of Israel. Yes, but it doesn't have to. I mean, he says they have a Seguire.
So what does Sibuah see? These are people who are atheists, and they're rejecting traditional religion, but we see they're connected to Jewish people because they're sacrificing themselves, clearing the malaria swamps, dealing with... attacks from the native population. I shouldn't say native, we're native too, but I mean, let's say the Arabs living there, it was very dangerous. So we see through their actions, they're connected to the Jewish people. It doesn't have to be only through the land.
A Jew in Europe, and we had many of those who sacrificed himself, you know, for Jewish well-being, things like that, that's also a Seguah. So Rav Kook is expanding, but he was living in the land of Israel, so he saw up close. And he saw the special nature, as we return to the land of Israel, the special nature of these irreligious Jews. By the way, he says about them, the reason they're atheists
many of them, is not that they reject God. They reject the simplistic idea of God that they have been taught. They've been taught about a God, you know, old man sitting up there with a long beard. I mean, they've been taught these foolish, simplistic ideas. So that's what they rejected. But if we taught them... a more advanced idea about God, they would not then be atheists. So he says these atheists are they come to teach us how we have to
you know, not strengthen, but purify our own views of God. That's their purpose, because everything has a holy spark. So what's the holy spark of the atheists? That they will teach us. how we have to sharpen and purify our own ideas about God, and then we can teach them the proper ideas. I love that. There's so much here and I really encourage everyone to go through it because there is so much there to unpack. I had a quote that I wanted to end with in this part.
Did you have something that you wanted to make sure that I didn't touch upon that is important? No, I think we've done a good job. Good. And I'm just going to say, you spoke a lot about the concept of... the secular knowledge and the sciences. And so I'm going to close this section with a quote.
Anyone who is able to involve himself in the wisdoms of the world and does not do so because of weakness in his soul diminishes the image of God within himself. As it says, for in the image of God made he man. And I just think that just says so much about his approach to everything. I remember, he wouldn't have said this in 18th century in Vilna. Then it was fine just to be focused on Torah study, but now that we're being called to return to history, to create a...
a people, to bring back a people to create a nation. He calls it the State of Israel, by the way. He calls it the State of Israel before it was called the State of Israel. Even in 1948, they didn't know what they were going to call it. Some people wanted to call it Yehudah, which was the name of the last Jewish commonwealth. calls that the future state is coming. We did not guess her out. So now that we're becoming complete people again, therefore it's time for us to once again not...
be focused only in our parochial matters, but also have more universal perspectives, like we used to have years and years ago when we were masters of our own destiny in the land. Ruff Cook says that just like every nation, of course, he says, has its advantages and special characteristics. And yet, so do all the Jewish people. Everyone has certain skills that they can add, and that's what it means to create a Jewish people in their own land.
Some people are going to be focused on Torah study, but others are going to be artists, and others are going to know how to build roads, and others are going to be doctors, and everyone has what to contribute. And that really reflects a great vision. I love that. Thank you. That was... A great summing up. So, but on the New Books Network, we always ask, what are you working on now? Or what can we expect to hear from you now?
Well, in the 18th century, there was a forgery, a famous forgery called the Samirosh of a great rabbi who went to the dark side, as it were, and he became what I think is a proto-reformer. I mean, there's debates about how to categorize them, and he forged a classic, he forged, he claimed there was a classic rabbinic text going back. to the days of Spain, Rabbi Asher ben Yechiel. And so my book is going to be a study of this forgery, what this rabbi was trying to accomplish, what goals.
We're behind this forgery, and that's what I'm going to deal with next. That sounds so interesting. I am definitely looking forward to that. And I look forward to speaking with you about it. So to sum up, we have been speaking with Professor Mark B. Shapiro about his most recent book, Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New, the Unique Vision of Rav Kook. It has been a true pleasure.
And to the rest of you, to continue exploring the diversity of the Jewish people, follow Unity Through Diversity on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, and our podcast, Reclaiming Identity. Thank you very much. And we wish a speedy recovery, a speedy return of all the hostages. Thank you.