After many years during which access to Rav Kook’s writings was through the edited selections published by his closest disciples, a few years ago his unexpurgated notebooks were published under the title of Shemoneh Kevatzim (Eight Notebooks). Many of the passages were the product of inspired, "automatic" writing undertaken after his morning prayers, which were especially impassioned. What follows is my translation of a random section of passages (well, almost – I opened to a page I had bookmarked a year ago or so when randomly perusing the volume soon after its acquisition). To be read by your neshamah on Yom Shishi in the afternoon, as preparation for Shabbat, for Elul, for the upcoming year, and for the life that is even now waiting to emerge from your depths.
Notebook 3:
78: The tangible world, which has been blurred beyond recognition and feeling by the inclination to the speculative world of holiness (within Jewish life), claims its role, and the outrages of this world's humiliation are precisely those outbursts and words of rejection that presumptuous, heretical oppositional criticism has become so accustomed to in recent times. But when one penetrates to the depth of matters, one finds, in the midst of this putrid pollution, precious pearls,. We dredge them up from the depths of Hell, clean and rinse, polish and burnish them, and set them into the splendid crown of the reflective thought of holiness, a thought which imparts glory to life eternal. And from the overwhelming power of goodness and holiness it becomes clear that there never really was any ugliness or evil here, for a pearl remains a pearl in whatever place it may be.
79: Those treasured individuals, the great thinkers and sophisticated idealists – they need to draw close to the masses with the humblest of approaches. That is to say, they need to know that not only in order to benefit and influence the masses are they coming, but also to learn from them and to be influenced by them in turn. That same robust natural healthiness, both material and spiritual, which is to be found in the masses, despite their coarseness and lack of knowledge, is several degrees above anything of the sort found amongst the gedolim (those great ones mentioned above), for whom ideas and spiritual ferment has damaged their simplicity, their quiet of spirit, and purity of soul. It is of course to be understood that, despite all this, very many levels higher is the level of inwardness of these wholehearted sages who through the depth of their knowledge have absorbed the light up uprightness, truth, and justice in their most inward sense. Nevertheless, there will always remain many faculties which will be refined via proximity of the masses, and they, the sages, will ascend no less than the ascent which the masses are bound to ascend through close proximity to the sages.
80: If not for the divine service of prayer, there would be no link connecting the sages to the masses, nor Yisrael to the entire world in the end of days, nor mankind to the animal kingdom. "I shall bring them to My holy mountain, and I shall make them rejoice in My house of prayer, their burnt-offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on My altar, for My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations. {The is} the word of the Eternal, G-d, who gathers the dispersed of Israel – I will continue gathering, onto those already gathered".
Rav Yehoshua Kahan
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Rav Yehoshua Kahan is a teacher at Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He has held pulpits in Knoxville, Tennessee and Los Angeles, and served as educational director of Livnot U'Lehibanot. He blogs on Parashat Hashavua here |