Forty years ago, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda HaCohen Kook passed away, who was one of the greatest generators of change in Israel since its inception.
Rabbi Zvi Yehuda was the only son of the late Rabbi (Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen) Kook, who established the Chief Rabbinate and the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva, and who was the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi in the country.
While it seems as if the father paved the way for a tolerant attitude toward secularism (when he admired the pioneers who put on whites just as the religious put on tefillin), he spoke of the State of Israel as the foundation of God's throne in the world, and his son just kept going. Today on every hill in Judea and Samaria, in the Knesset plenum, in the White House and sometimes also in the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
It can be said that without Rabbi Zvi Yehuda - there would not have been a Gush Emunim, and without Gush Emunim we would not have been able to hold Judea and Samaria, because without settlement the Israeli governments would have given up these homeland ropes long ago.
Today, 150 localities, with half a million people, guard the Land of Israel, and they would not be there without the Herzliya.
But not only that.
One of the most important enterprises inspired by the teachings of the Herzliya was educational: the Zvia education network, the Meir Institute yeshiva, the pre-military preparatory school and many seder yeshivas revolutionized the educational map in Israel - they allowed young people to study Torah without being ultra-Orthodox. Draw a new line, this is how a sector was born.
Despite all this, for those who are not close students it is difficult to find inspirational quotes from the rabbi, ones that will make people like Benny Katzover, Hanan Porat, Moshe Levinger and Haim Druckman give up everything and go fight with the whole world to settle the mountains.
Nor is it clear whether in his character was the charismatic passion of a sweeping leader.
It could be that he was actually the eye of the storm, around which everything was flooding.
This is the riddle of his life.
The translation of his father's ideas and teachings is in fact an undecipherable enigma, which has not really been researched and studied to this day.
And indeed, around him crowded forces that formed an atomic reactor from which emerged this big bang, whose ripples we feel to this day, and we will feel for generations to come.
Enormous people came to the Herzliya who wanted to belong, to stick with each other and with a great idea, and found at the Merkaz Harav yeshiva the answers, the glue and the signal to jump.
The late Rabbi Zvi Yehuda was able to plant an orderly mishnah in his students, and send them to the world as arrows to fulfill this ideology in the world of reality. They are like cells of an organization, charged with an electric charge that can change reality. Israel, the Land of Israel and the Torah of Israel, and their lives are dedicated to them.
The Torah of Herzliya will continue its operation in the world. : How do you implement great ideas in the real world?
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
If you found an error in the article, we'll be happy for you to share it with us