Shabbat Parashat Noach 5785

Igrot Hare’aya – Letters of Rav Kook: The Need for a Broader Education – #274

Recipient: Rav Baruch Meyers, head of the rabbinical court of Haifa.

Body: I will respond to your comments on the current state of religion. What can I say to you? The general situation has wounded my heart severely! There appears to be no one left to raise the banner of the Name of Hashem and His Torah in the Holy Land. Occupying myself with this idea makes my heart churn and be tempest-tossed. I found no straightforward manner to begin to act against it.

Unfortunately. it is very difficult for me to come to peace with the approach of the majority of today’s leading Torah scholars. They want to follow the old path, which is to distance everyone from any skill and activity that is related to life [outside directly religious activity]. It is clear to me that this is totally against the path of Hashem. In this way, they assist the wayward sinners and their supporters. Woe unto us from these great rabbis’ humility, even despite their laudable intentions.

We are compelled to support the form of education that includes knowledge of the world and life and leads children with a spirit of excitement about life, with vigor and boldness of the heart, with cleanliness and proper flourishes. All of these things join together with a path into the world of Torah and honest fear of Heaven, and they actually crown it and strengthen it. At the end of the process, the evil angel will have to respond “Amen” [to the achievements attained]. What can I do about the fact that, although I am certain this is the way to proceed, I find myself in a heated battle with those to the right and to the left?! Still, I hope that His Blessed Name will give me the strength to carry the banner of truth proudly, so that holiness will triumph.

Dear colleague, all of these major matters are interdependent. Most of those who learn Torah, including the generation’s leading scholars, do not concentrate on becoming great in the proper approach to fear of Heaven, with the great breadth that befits leaders of the nation. Therefore, they lack the skills to embark on new roads that are appropriate for the times and align them to lead to sanctity. This forces them, according to their perspective, to cling to the exact style in which education was approached in the past, without using any of the new approaches’ positive points, which could be useful for our generation according to its status. They will not admit, under any circumstance, that a major area of study, which is inclusive to all of Torah and all of belief (ed. note – i.e., Kabbala) is totally lost to them, which is why they grope for a way forward in the afternoon as if it were pitch dark.

For this reason, the masses increasingly stray and increasingly become heretics. They are not at all at fault, for no one shows them the straight path, by connecting the sanctity of Torah and belief in Hashem with active life. This causes them to become heretics. On the other hand, they possess sparks of goodness, fine qualities, and many of them fervently desire Israel’s redemption and return to life in the Holy Land. Even though their understanding of the process is lowly, their intentions stand on a foundation of sanctity, as Israel’s redemption includes every holy matter in the world.

The more we can find merit in even the most sinful people, as long as they do not want to fully break from the nation and join our enemies, and the more we incorporate in our education useful matters and teach our sons studies that will bring them a livelihood and human dignity, connected to the Torah, the more we add strength to the foundation of Torah.

Who can we speak to, who will agree, who will be willing to put his honor at stake in order to bring honor to Hashem, His Torah, and the sanctity of His desired Land? We hope that someone will act on Hashem’s behalf and put in the heart of all the Torah scholars an understanding of Hashem’s path of purity, and He shall soon save Israel and Judea.

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