In the nineteen century there was a movement among Ashkenazi Jews in Europe to move to Palestine which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. These new Jewish communities needed spiritual guidance and help interacting with the long established Jewish community already in place. Rabbi Kook took on this challenge. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This was from a series of stamps on the heroes of the underground movement of Jews in Palestine in the lead up to the founding of the modern state of Israel 30 years before. The stamp issue started by remembering five heroes. Then it was realized that there were more people worthy of remembrance. By the end of the year 14 stamps had come out each with a different hero. I am left feeling sorry for the 15th hero on Israel’s list who just didn’t make the cut. What was he? chopped liver?
Todays stamp is issue A280. a 2 Israeli Pound stamp issued on August 2nd, 1978. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused.
Abraham Isaac Kook was born in Courland in what was then Czarist Russia (now Latvia) in 1865. I did a stamp about Courland here, https://the-philatelist.com/2019/08/09/latvia-1919-ulmanis-slays-the-russian-dragon-to-take-kurland/ . He was born into a family of prominent Orthodox Rabbis and became one himself. He was known as quite a Torah scholar. He believed it was the destiny of Jews around the world to return to the territory of the ancient Israeli Kingdom in order to fulfill divine prophesy.
In 1904 he accepted a Rabinacle assignment in Jaffa. His responsibilities their included nearby newly established Jewish farming communities. To his surprise he found the communities to be fairly secular. He made reaching out to secular Jews a specific mission of his. He thought secular Jews still had a part to play in the founding of a new Israel. He could see the important work they were doing getting agriculture in place in what had been a desolate land. He also was in deep spiritual communications with Jews still in Europe and others in Yemen to guide them on the path of coming to Palestine.
A committed pacifist,Rabbi Kook sat out World War I in Switzerland and London while the territory of Palestine passed from the Ottomans to the British. The now British administration of the area was heavily staffed by British Jews and the time was right to make his move back to Jerusalem to become the Chief Rabbi of Palestine. This was the first time that job had been held by a Ashkenazi Jew rather than an Ottoman Rabbi. This was reflective of the Jewish community now being far more than Jewish Quarters of Ottoman cities. See also, https://the-philatelist.com/2017/12/05/mosque-of-omar-the-mandate-to-try-to-stand-between/
Rabbi Kook did not live to see the founding of the modern Israel, dying in 1935. A Yeshiva he founded still exists and a community has his name in the form of an acronym of his name in Hebrew, Kfar Haroeh. I am not Jewish, and am no religious scholar but I think this quote from Rabbi Kook did a good job of explaining where he was coming from. “Therefore the pure righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not not complain of evil, they increase justice; they do not complain of heresy, they increase faith: they do not complain of ignorance, they increase wisdom.”
Well my drink is empty and so I will have to wait till tomorrow when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting.