Remembering Rav Neria

In 1935 a then 22-year-old Moshe Zvi Neria was eyewitness to the only meeting between HaRav and The Rav: That summer Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik visited Eretz Yisrael for the first and only time, as a candidate for the position of Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv. During that trip, he met with Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Rav Avraham Yitzhak ha-Kohen Kook, who was in the final weeks of his life. Rav Kook was reported to have said that “the experience of speaking with the young Rabbi Soloveitchik reminded him of his earliest years when he was a student” attending shiurim of Reb Hayyim Brisker at the Volozhin yeshiva, and he maintained “that the power of genius of the grandfather now resides with the grandson.”

Years later, in 1977, R. Neria reminisced with R. Soloveitchik about that meeting with Rav Kook, and published highlights of their conversation in his weekly column in Hatzofe, the newspaper of Israel’s Religious Zionist community.

R. Neria (1913–1995) was one of Rav Kook’s most influential disciples, left a profound impact on Israeli society, and was a formative influence on the Religious Zionist community through his role as an educator, Rosh Yeshiva, founder of the Bnei Akiva youth movement (and its affiliated network of schools), and Member of Knesset for a term. As we mark R. Neria’s 30th yahrzeit starting this evening (19 Kislev) we share an item from our archives by TRADITION’s editor, Jeffrey Saks, which resurfaced and made available in English R. Neria’s reminiscences of that 1935 encounter between the two greatest ba’alei mahashava of the century. The essay also includes an annotated bibliography of the comparative scholarship of Rabbis Soloveitchik and Kook (overdue for an update with new material published in the intervening two decades).

Read “Rabbi Soloveitchik Meets Rav Kook,” TRADITION 39:3 (Fall 2006).

For more on R. Neria’s life and teachings see these special resources in Hebrew on the website of Yeshivat Bnei Akiva.