Shabbat Parashat Vaeira 5784

Igrot Hare’aya – Letters of Rav Kook: Dreaming of Deep Ideas with a Likeminded Person – #184 – part I

Date and Place: 7 Shevat 5669 (1909), Yafo 

Recipient: Rav Pinchas Hakohen Lintop, the rabbi of a Chassidic community in Lithuania. He had learned Kabbala with Rav Kook when Rav Kook was in Boisk, and the two were very deep and like-minded thinkers, in many ways. 

Body: Your hopes for rabbinical conferences are always dreams for me, but now there is unfortunately not a hint of beauty to accompany a pleasant image. Our nation’s shepherds are in a deep slumber. This is not due to ill will but due to a weakness in the soul, after days, years, and eras have passed without “food that is truly life-giving and healing.” I refer to the live light of the internal, elevated light of the Torah (kabbalistic thought). When the rabbis will get together, they will not admit a deficiency in wisdom and spirit or believe the [exhortations] of the few who are “armed with Hashem’s forearm.” The table at the conference will certainly be adorned with an analytical dilemma on a matter of Halacha, a minute detail from the perspective of spiritual depth. It may be major and broad from the perspective of the depth of intellectual gymnastics needed to solve it, but that will resemble one who uses a tremendous amount of gold to make a machine that produces one steel pin. They might discuss a matter of homiletics, incorporating ideas of ethics to apply in life, with an unclear kabbalistic idea or an old philosophy. This will only increase the basis of the unproductive rabbinical atmosphere. It will also create a new pain along with great “labor pains” of Israel, which is agonizing in this pain.

My brother, this is not the approach [we need]. We should not request conferences but establish literary platforms, using “sharp scalpels” and two-sided swords, whose body, head, and two sides of the blade’s edge contain the letters of Hashem’s Name. Let us use it to “cut raw meat” that still maintains its characteristic and lacks fear. Let us heal the wounds, using “bindings” from an abundance of lofty divine spirit and a “stream of delicacies” that come from the source of divine wisdom. We shall use as “herbs” the dew of divine light to “stop the bleeding.” The flow of new life from the source of He Who is eternally alive will begin to be in the midst of the live blood, which is produced from the “healthy food.” It will flow from the “fields of the wisdom of truth,” cultivated by trustworthy farmers, brave soldiers, who love Hashem and His nation and care for Hashem’s creations and His world.

This is our goal in taking very measured steps as we start to produce the periodical “The Nir.” We need to begin with a nir (a plowed field), weed out the thorns from the whole area, and ready the Jewish People “to sow with a new light” that will have the impact it had in the distant past, with greater purity. For real cause, we have smelted the steel and scrubbed it clean. The kiln used to purify is the long, oppressive exile. While we have suffered greatly to improve the world, we cannot deny that we too need a lot of purification and that [exile] has been ultimately good for us. Because we sat in darkness, Hashem has been our light (see Micha 7:8).

With the dew of light, coming from the sweet stream of the Desired Land, the place of our life and strength, we will bring everything to life. We will make the most of the smallest resource; everything will be fruitful. The love of the nation, which is simple, straight, and natural, refreshing and healthy, must develop as a practical matter that puts light in the hearts of all who are truly fit to be crowned as great Torah leaders; it will cause all of the towers to be built and fortified. This will occur specifically in the place of national life, which we feel as we live on the Land with confidence in its redemption. It is awakening and will envelope all of the distant flock, which were scattered from mountain to mountain but did not forget “its pen or its shepherds”, who accompanied them.

Top of page

Print this page

Send to friend