ABRAHAM ISAAC KOOK’S ACCOUNT OF ‘CREATIVE EVOLUTION’: A RESPONSE TO MODERNITY FOR THE SAKE OF ZION

The Chief Rabbi of Israel and religious Zionist Abraham I. Kook is well known for having written about evolution. His mystical interpretation of the theory is often presented as a synthetic or complementary model that effectively offered a defence of Judaism in the context of the religion-science debate. But this is not the only context in which one might consider his views on the topic. From a political perspective, one might note his interest in the influence of Darwinism in the thought of secular Jews. And if one gives due weight to his appreciation of secular Zionists’ work in building up the Land and combines this with his earlier, often overlooked writings on evolution in which the mystical dimension is missing, then it is possible to suggest that his engagement with evolutionary theory reflected as much a political concern to build bridges between religious and nonreligious Zionists as it expressed a theological defence of traditional Judaism against the challenges of modern science. Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) was the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel, a position he held during the pre-State Mandate period 1919-1935, and the most influential leader of religious Zionism at that time. Strictly speaking, Kook was not primarily interested in biological evolutionary theory and certainly not Darwinian natural selection despite the fact that he is probably the Jewish religious authority best known for having engaged positively with evolution. Rather than the directionless, chance-driven theory of natural selection, Kook’s interest in evolutionary theory was actually as a philosophical theory of progress. According to most commentators on Kook, including Shai Cherry, the chief authority on the matter,1 he approached the subject through the prism of a mystical conception of ascent in an attempt to maintain the integrity of Jewish tradition in the face of the challenges of modernity. He sought to reassure anxious co-religionists that evolutionary theory posed no threat to Judaism but rather conformed to existing kabbalistic teachings about cosmic evolution and a progressive world. To achieve this end, Kook attempted to present mystical and scientific understandings of evolution as complementary to each other. What has been left out of this account, however, is the role of Zionism. In what follows it will be argued that there were actually two stages to Kook’s * Professor of the History of Jewish-Christian Relations at the University of Manchester. Email: daniel.langton@manchester.ac.uk My thanks to Marc Shapiro for drawing my attention to Kook’s early sources, and for his estimates of the dates of several of Kook’s other works, and to Noam Livne for his assistance with Kook’s Hebrew and for his helpful comments throughout. 1 Shai Cherry, ‘Three Twentieth-Century Jewish Responses to Evolutionary Theory’, Aleph 3 (2003). This is derived from his wider survey of Jewish engagement with evolution: Michael Shai Cherry, ‘Creation, Evolution and Jewish Thought’ (Doctoral thesis, Brandeis University, 2001). MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 2 thought, and that political considerations, as much as any theological ones, are necessary for understanding his interest in the subject. Kook’s influence and appeal as a traditionalist religious leader was in large part due to the seriousness with which he engaged with the challenges of modernity and secularism. This applied in particular to secular Zionism, to which many religious Jews, whether Zionist or non-Zionist, were implacably opposed. Kook, however, adopted a controversial position on the subject. Almost immediately after becoming Chief Rabbi of Jaffa in 1904 Kook argued in a newspaper article that the secularists’ underlying national and ethical idealism was, for him, an expression of a fundamentally religious urge. He suggested that the Talmudic claim that the Messiah would arrive in a generation that was entirely guilty or entirely innocent (Sanhedrin 98a) could be understood to mean that the generation in question would be neither guilty nor innocent, but both at the same time. This, he argued, applied to those anti-religious Zionist pioneers who did not themselves appreciate that their motives were subconsciously religious ones; after all, the chalutzim demonstrated great idealism and self-sacrifice in attempting to realize what was the traditional messianic goal of a just and equal society and who called for the ingathering of the exiles.2 In a letter dated 1912 he discussed secularism as one of several forces at work in the Land trying to build institutions according to their own philosophies. After criticizing secularist Zionists for having ‘renounced everything holy’ and for destructively distracting settlers in Eretz Yisrael from God and his Holy Torah, he went on, But there is no denying that together with this there is also some important element that sustains life: a strong love for the nation and a clear and firm goal to develop the practical aspect of the settlement in Eretz Yisrael, to strengthen the national historic spirit of this generation toward attachment to the land and the people. With all its alienation [from tradition], there remains in this group a very powerful spark of holiness that is worthy of being activated by the efforts of the faithful ...3 His advice to his fellow religious Zionists was to engage with the secularists so as to ‘minimise the destructive effects which it causes’ and to ‘try to arouse the holy spirit of Jewish people that is in the hearts of all the children of Jacob in whatever way it is possible.’4 He would articulate this kind of defence of the godless secular Zionists up until his death in 1935. Even that year, he wrote a newspaper article in which he countenanced patience with the chalutzim who should be regarded as valued workers rebuilding the Land, for there would be plenty of time to apply traditional standards of religious piety once their work was completed and Palestine had become a Jewish commonwealth.5 It seems that Kook’s sympathy for the secularists stemmed in large part from his particular understanding of the crisis of modernity in Western culture, which had alienated these Jews from their religious traditions. In Orot Ha-Kodesh [Lights of Holiness], 2 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‘Hador’, Ikkevei Hatzon (1904), cited in Tamar Ross, ‘What Would Rav Kook Have to Say About the State of Israel Today?’, in Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Jewish Spirituality, ed. Lawrence J. Kaplan and David Shatz (New York, London: New York University Press, 1995), 303-304. 3 Open letter to Agudat Yisrael conference (1912) in Abraham Isaac Kook and Ben Zion Bokser, The Essential Writings of Abraham Isaac Kook (New York: Amity House, 1988), 116-119. 4 Open letter to Agudat Yisrael conference (1912) in ibid. 5 Abraham Isaac Kook, Ha-Hed, Elul 1935, cited in Samuel Higo Bergman, ‘On Reality in God’, in Essays on the Thought and Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, ed. Ezra Gellman (New York: Cornwall Books, 1991), 84. ABRAHAM ISAAC KOOK’S ACCOUNT OF ‘CREATIVE EVOLUTION’ (DANIEL LANGTON) 3 a three-volume collection of essays published posthumously in 1963-64, he would later explain that the crisis in ‘man’s outlook’ that had brought about ‘confusion and disorder’ to wider society, had been caused by several factors. Of these, the theory of evolution was highlighted for having ‘wrought a major revolution’.6 One possible response to this situation would have been to condemn the theory and those secularist Jews who held to it, as did many of Kook’s co-religionists, of course. But, as we shall see, Kook did not do this. After all, secular Jews identified closely with Western secular culture, and evolutionary theory was one of the foundational truths of that culture, so to attack it in the name of Judaism would be to alienate secular Jews further from Judaism. If the theory lay at the root of the confusion, and if one hoped to bring secular Jews back to Jewish tradition, then one ought to adopt a more tolerant, conciliatory attitude towards it. To convince his coreligionists of the desirability of this, however, Kook needed to show that either the theory was compatible with Jewish faith and that one should regard it as an opportunity for debate, or that Judaism taught an even more powerful version of the theory. Arguably, one can trace two stages in Kook’s thought on the matter, which roughly correlate with these positions. The earliest direct reference Kook made to evolution can be found in Li-Nevuchei HaDor [For the Perplexed of this Generation], written around 1900. In this work he rejected the idea that evolution challenged religion, and suggested rather that an understanding of the time and complexity of evolution would only increase our admiration and appreciation of God’s creation of species. As he explained, Evolution that comes with great gradualness, milliards of years, is what agitates the hearts of the small-minded. They think that evolution is a reason to deny the existence of the living God, but they are greatly mistaken ... When we see the great creation and how it is arranged according to laws of wisdom, and the ways of all living things in their bodies and minds and intelligence and how all is arranged in a single system, then we recognize the great Spirit present here, which gives life to everything and makes all possible. And if the ways of wisdom compel [us to acknowledge] that this came to pass through evolution over myriads of myriad of years, we feel the utmost wonder at how great and exalted is God the Eternal, that myriads of years working constantly to produce a desired end, are reckoned as naught or a instant.7 After all, Kook went on, What is the difference between the evolution of the globes of the stars and the worlds according to their size over myriads of years, and the evolution of the fetus within its mother over months? And yet we understand that ‘Wondrous are Your deeds and my soul surely knows ... that