To Betray Your Own Essence

In a long and wondrous passage, the Rav speaks with all of us through the story of Bialik and Achad Ha'am. Bialik was a student in the Volozhin yeshiva, which was a Lithuanian yeshiva in which they studied mainly Talmud. Asher Ginsberg (known as "Achad Ha'am") was a student in a Hasidic yeshiva. These two important figures studied in places opposed to their spirit, their temperament, and their talents. Bialik was a humanistic poet who studied in a very realistic place, which stifled his spirit. "Achad Ha'am" was a rationalist thinker for whom the Hasidic world did not suit; in the end they did not remain in the world of Torah. Rav Kook laments this fact, and explains it: when a person is in a place that does not suit him and tries by force to do things contrary to his spirit and his talents, he is liable to turn into one who hates what he does – this is expressed in studying something unsuitable, in the choice of a profession, and in many other choices in life. Every person must find the place in which he can express himself and his talent in the best way, both within the world of Torah and in general in the great world.