An intellectual and spiritual biography of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhaq Ha-Cohen Kook from 1865 to 1904

This dissertation seeks to fill a gaping hole in the voluminous literature surrounding the outstanding modern Jewish mystic, theologian and rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), i.e. the decades prior to his emigration from Latvia to the Land of Israel in 1904 at age 38. The numerous works he wrote in those years are almost completely neglected in the scholarly literature as are the concrete details of his life and activities at the time. Moreover, very little scholarly biography of him at any period exists and this dissertation hopes to set a model for others to follow. These works differ from his later better-known writings in a number of ways, including their explicit indebtedness to medieval rationalism, their casting of Jewish nationalism in universalizing and non-Messianic terms, and the absence of discussion of the Land of Israel as a theologically central term; this in contrast to Jewish peoplehood which is significant for him throughout. The dissertation traces his evolution in this period from an ethos of self-cultivation under the impress of the intellect and very indebted to medieval philosophy to one of self-expression and subjectivity. While he began to study Kabbalah at an early age it was not until later that he began to internalize Kabbalistic concepts and thus come to see the individual, the collective and the world as a whole as a dynamic arena of contending, dialectical metaphysical forces. This in turn was related to the mounting expressivism and subjectivity of his thought, which arose out of the combination of his own introspection and his reflection on the social and cultural circumstances of his times. The dissertation shows that his reworking of medieval philosophical categories, in particular the relationship between intellect and imagination, was crucial to this development. In addition to these themes, the dissertation offers a chronological portrait of his early life and education, in the context of Latvian-Lithuanian Rabbinic culture of the time, his early publications and Rabbinic posts, his complex engagement with the Mussar movement, the evolution of his thinking on Jewish nationalism and his eventual emigration to the Land of Israel. The Conclusion, discusses the implications of all the above for our understanding of Rav Kook's thought as a whole, and, to some extent, for the study of religion in general. It takes the measure of his passage to subjectivity and his autobiographical theology. It also relates the findings of the dissertation to contemporary politics and theology.