Shabbat Parashat Vaetchanan 5782

Igrot Hare’aya – Letters of Rav Kook: Questions about Religious Services in Eretz Yisrael – #111 – part IV

Date and Place: 2 Adar I 5668 (1908), Yafo

Recipient: Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac Halevi, author of Dorot Harishonim.

Body: I will do my best to answer your questions. First, I will quote your question, and then I will answer. 

Question #5: Will the religious schools teach the language of the land, if it is possible to find religious Jewish teachers who have fear of Heaven “from beginning to end”?

My answer: It is unclear to me if you are asking about the religious schools that already exist in certain settlements or about the future, when such schools will be formed. Either way, you are touching on a painful point, as I will explain.

For at least the last 50 years, those who subscribe to Haskala started in different ways to influence Yerushalayim specifically and Eretz Yisrael in general. As we know, there is an exaggerated fear of the broadly entrenched Haskala, even though there is a basis for fear. There is even a greater than usual negative reaction in Yerushalayim and other places in Eretz Yisrael. Due to the abundance of piety that exists here and because of the poverty and the separation from all of the world of practical life and their upheavals, the level of resistance “overflowed.” The scholars of Eretz Yisrael, which includes some brilliant and extremely pious individuals, made a prohibition with a severe ban of excommunication on the study of any secular intellectual enterprise and on the teaching of any foreign language. They did not make an exception for the language of the land, and they strengthened their ban with many stringencies, and they especially invoked the personality of the wondrous giant, Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin, may the memory of the pious be a blessing.

Based on the present situation, this prohibition sits on the shoulders of the people who fear Hashem and follow His ways completely like a yoke of iron, for they have no way to educate their children [in the way they believe is best]. They see clearly that they cannot exist and maintain themselves according to the new conditions of life without languages and science. They see that all of those who throw off the yoke of Torah and mitzvot educate their children in schools and prepare their children for the "war of life" to the fullest degree, and only the children of the parents who are connected to the sanctity of the Torah and belief remain behind in the ways of life.

The simple person that I am, once I came here, I expressed my opinion to a special group of high-quality people that it is not good to continue in this manner. We need to see in advance that which is going to occur and to prepare the medicine before the disease comes. I let my opinion be known that we must do for the sake of Hashem that which otherwise be forbidden and to enter a very narrow crack in the rules. This must be done in order to prepare our children, who are being taught by their parents and teachers to follow the path of Torah and mitzvot, for the "battle of life," by teaching languages and the most important topics in science.

[In the meantime,] we are turning a blind eye to those who have started a special religious school and hired teachers who teach languages and critical sciences. They act according to the path of Torah and fear of Heaven, even though what they are doing is against the set approach of the earlier generation of Torah scholars who forbade this. Nevertheless, when the matter becomes practical, when we ourselves will be the ones who found and maintain new schools, we will have to deal with this matter. We will need to give and take in the halachic intricacies of the matter, whether to follow the prohibition adopted by the previous generation and when there are sufficient conditions to permit it to the proper degree.

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