REVIEW: Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New
Marc B. Shapiro, Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New: The Unique Vision of Rav Kook (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2024), 228 pp.
Any new book by Professor Marc B. Shapiro naturally elicits enthusiasm, given his role as one of Jewish Studies’ most erudite scholars. His most recent offering, Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New: The Unique Vision of Rav Kook is especially interesting as it represents a foray into new areas of research for Shapiro, who has not previously published on Religious Zionism or the Israeli scene. But upon closer reading, the book is also a continuation of his decades-long project. Shapiro is curious about how Rav Kook’s theological vision might contribute to contemporary Jewish thought (particularly Orthodox) in the United States.
Rav Kook’s writings were of limited influence during much of his lifetime. As much as he was a key figure in pre-State Palestine, he did not generate a community of followers during the founding of the State. Rav Kook and his yeshiva became more influential primarily in the 1970s, with the rise of Gush Emunim and the growing influence of a Hardal (Haredi Le’umi, nationalist ultra-Orthodox) movement within Religious Zionism. This occurred primarily after the Yom Kippur War.
Today, Rav Kook and his thought are matters of great urgency in Israel. His grand- and great-grand students are some of the most influential rabbis, teachers, academics, thought leaders, and intellectuals in Israel. In most Religious Zionist circles he is simply referred to as “HaRav,” and it surprises no one to hear his name mentioned on the radio or newspaper in the context of debates over Israeli current events, whether in matters of religion and state, the territories, feminism and Orthodoxy, or the future of Zionism.
There is, then, a major conversation happening around Rav Kook and his legacy in Israel. The Hardal stream emphasizes him as a halakhic conservative, a particularist, a militant, and a Land of Israel maximalist. He was, by this reading, only incidentally interested in limited general education, and accepted non-observant Jews only on his own terms, since he saw them inevitably becoming observant in the future. The academic community and the often overlapping liberal wing of Religious Zionism reads Rav Kook as more halakhically flexible, seeing him as more of a universalist, as more liberal, as more of a peace activist, and as less territorially maximalist. They often see his appreciation of secular Jews as more ideal. Neither, it seems to me, is right or wrong. It simply depends on which texts one chooses to emphasize, how one chooses to read them, and how one chooses to contextualize them. Both groups have found a usable past, a Rav Kook who provides inspiration for their ideological needs and agendas.
For the most part, these issues have had limited influence among English-speaking Jewry outside of Israel. Some works have been translated (most notably through the efforts of Bezalel Naor), essays have been written, and students return from year-in-Israel programs with at least some familiarity with the figure. But Rav Kook’s prose is extraordinarily difficult; his Land-of-Israel centrism seems ill-suited to the agendas of American Jews, and his mysticism can be off-putting for more practically minded Anglos.
Marc Shapiro, with his vast erudition and knowledge that spans the diversity of the Jewish bookshelf, has made an attempt to revive the relevance of Rav Kook for English-speaking Orthodox readers. He does so not by translating the Israeli conversation into English. Instead, he identifies places where Rav Kook addresses issues that are already on the Modern Orthodox intellectual agenda. Hence, his book is less about Zionist ideology, cosmic repentance, and the relationship between universalism and particularism (topics central to Rav Kook’s oeuvre). Instead, it is about several places where Rav Kook’s thought rejects a narrow dogmatism and considers ideas that some would consider heterodox. This is part of Shapiro’s longstanding enterprise of expanding the boundaries of what is acceptable within Orthodox discourse.
Shapiro examines Rav Kook’s approach to several questions and establishes him as a source for a more expansive theological position than might be expected. For example, Rav Kook argues that some Biblical stories—particularly from the earliest parts of Genesis—need not be taken literally and might not have even occurred as depicted.
Rav Kook also takes a dialectical approach to the relationship between Talmudic scholars and the uneducated masses. People often associate Hazon Ish with the idea that the opinion of Torah scholars stands in tension with and in opposition to that of balebatim. The classical Lithuanian yeshiva approach sees Torah scholarship as the central, if not only path to genuine wisdom, while Rav Kook argues that the uneducated masses possess an instinctive wisdom that can be undermined by too much scholarship. Where talmidei hakhamim can lose the forest for the trees, the balebatim can have an easier time perceiving basic intuitive morality and the larger religious framework. Moreover, for an age when the Jewish People are returning to history, there is no alternative but exposure to and study of general education to enable Torah to interact wisely with the goings-on of the world.
Marc B. Shapiro
Rav Kook’s often referenced but usually misunderstood approach to animal sacrifice also garners Shapiro’s attention. Largely a vegetarian himself, Rav Kook was concerned that animal sacrifice is both cruel and bloody as well as primitive and incompatible with a lofty conception of God. Rav Kook suggests, therefore, that the messianic Third Temple will transcend the limitations of animal sacrifice offerings and function only with plant-based offerings. Moreover, and more radically, he links this to a wider consideration that in the messianic age the Sanhedrin might have authority to uproot positive commandments that are no longer appropriate for a more sensitive messianic-era morality. Rav Kook raises the possibility that a future Sanhedrin could rewrite the derashot on the Torah, allowing, for example, women to testify in rabbinic court.
Regarding one issue in particular, Shapiro focuses on an issue that is of great concern to the Religious Zionist discourse in Israel. Namely, he identifies Rav Kook’s concern that involvement in politics can be morally corrupting and a reflection of his conception of the advantages of powerlessness for moral purity. Rav Kook himself offers this as a counterbalance to his enthusiasm for the Zionist return to politics and power. According to Shapiro’s close reading, Rav Kook sought to resolve this tension by acknowledging that a democratic and non-monarchical government, or at least a monarchy with limited powers, can fulfill the commandment of appointing a king. Rav Kook considers not a messianic king, but some other form of ethical government.
Marc Shapiro’s writings tend to shake up existing categories of thinking, and Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New is no exception. It shuffles the deck by asking questions that are directed away from the normal fields of Rav Kook research, such as the typical focus on Israel, the Land, Zionism, and contemporary Israeli concerns. Instead, Shapiro brings Rav Kook into a larger and potentially fruitful claim that the canon of Jewish texts contains a much broader and diverse set of ideas than dogmatists would have us believe.
Dr. Yoel Finkelman, Director of the Archival Acquisitions and Testimonies Department at Yad Vashem, is currently working on a study of the recently publicized notebooks of Monsieur Shoshani. Read Finkelman’s review of Marc B. Shapiro’s Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History (TRADITION, Spring 2016).