„...to power in the year 1933, two years before his death, Rav Kook de…”
„...to power in the year 1933, two years before his death, Rav Kook delivered a sermon at the Ruin of Rabbi Yehudah HeChasid in the Old City of Jerusalem, in which he speaks of an evil that stirs the redemption. In these words Rav Kook joined the vision and the pleas of many of the fathers of Zionism who called upon the people of the exile to return to their land. For the full sermon: ***”
(Ma'amrei HaRe'iyah I, pp. 268-269).
***
Processes occur in the world, and it is often in our hands to choose whether to receive the process in a straight manner or in a crooked one. Sometimes we are the ones who choose; sometimes these are broad national choices; and sometimes there is no one who can foresee and choose how the process encountered along the way will unfold.
The people of Israel had settled in the exile at the very hour when the shofar of the Land of Israel began to be heard and the gates of the Land began to open. In very many places they refused to hear the voice of this pure shofar—God forbid that we should judge them.
But when a pure shofar is not heard, when we do not discern the signs in the good and simple way, we are sometimes forced to receive blows and suffering in order to understand.
I do not know whether Rav Kook foresaw the terrible Holocaust with Hitler's rise to power (which occurred still in his lifetime, two years before his death). Was there any person who could have foreseen such wickedness and portrayed that the rise of the Nazis would lead to the goal of the Final Solution? But this whip of the Holocaust, in the end, was part of the shofar of the Land of Israel—part of what compelled the world to affirm that the Land of Israel is a home for the Jewish people, and part of what led many Jews to choose the Land of Israel.
On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day 5781, let us pray that we may succeed in passing through the coming processes in a straight and positive way, and that God will not place us before trials.
The words spoken by Rav Kook were, as noted, written in 1933. There is in these words no criticism of that generation nor any attempt to explain the terrible Holocaust. Rather, there is in them something to teach us all about the need to listen constantly to history and to the present, so that our future may be better.
In memory of the six million Jews who perished in the terrible Holocaust, and for the recovery of the survivors.
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From the community archive of Mishpetei HaRav Kook — studying Rav Kook's teachings since 2011.