Marc B. Shapiro’s books and articles are always superb. His writings are filled with fascinating information. His presentation of scholarly ideas and religious and secular practices, ancient and modern, Jewish and non-Jewish, is explained engagingly. Even people who are generally uninterested in the subjects, Jews and non-Jews who have no background knowledge of it, find what he writes to be eye-opening and riveting.[1]

Shapiro’s 2025 book

“Renewing the Old Sanctifying the New: The Unique Vision of Rav Kook” is such a book.[2] Dr. Shapiro reveals Rabbi Kook’s surprising, sometimes radical, and breathtaking ideas, prompting us to rethink what we have accepted as sensible.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) was pre-state Israel’s first Ashkenazi chief rabbi. Ashkenazi Jews were from the area in and near Germany, in contrast to Sephardic Jews who lived in Israel and Muslim countries. He introduced many interpretations of Jewish ideas to please Jews and non-Jews of all persuasions.

He was born in what is today Latvia, served in two rabbinic positions there from 1896 until he moved to the Land of Israel in 1904, was appointed Chief Rabbi in 1921, and served in this position until he died in 1935.

He was a talented student in his youth at the famed Volozhin Yeshiva. However, he rejected his time’s traditional Talmud-only, single-minded, study-only system, which is still followed by many ultra-Orthodox yeshivas today. He insisted that such studies ruin the minds and behaviors of Jews who must learn secular studies in addition to Jewish ones. While he introduced many rational teachings, he also liked Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism. Still, here, too, he stressed that people studying Kabbalah must also learn secular subjects, meaning scientific advances, for the Torah can and must coexist with current scientific truths.

He asserted that total........

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