Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook אברהם יצחק הכהן קוק‎
First Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine
Abraham Isaac Kook in 1924
Personal details
Born	8 September 1865 Daugavpils, Russian Empire (Today in Latvia)
Died	11 September 1935 (aged 69) Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine
Denomination	Orthodox

Abraham Isaac Kook (Hebrew: אברהם יצחק הכהן קוק Abraham Yitshak ha-Kohen Kuk;8 September 1865–11 September 1935) was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine, the founder of Yeshiva Mercaz HaRav Kook (The Central Universal Yeshiva), Jewish thinker, Halakhist, Kabbalist and a renowned Torah scholar. He is known in Hebrew as הרב אברהם יצחק הכהן קוק HaRav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, and by the acronym הראיה (HaRaAYaH), or simply as "HaRav." He was one of the most celebrated and influential rabbis of the 20th century.

HaRav Kook was born in Griva in the Courland Governorate of the Russian Empire in 1865, today a part of Daugavpils, Latvia, the oldest of eight children. His father, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Ha-Cohen Kook, was a student of the Volozhin yeshiva, the "mother of the Lithuanian yeshivas", whereas his maternal grandfather was an avid follower of the Kapust branch of the Hasidic movement, founded by the son of the great Rabbi of Chabad, the "Tzemach Tzedek," known also as Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn of Lubavitch.

As a child he gained a reputation of being an ilui (prodigy). He entered the Volozhin Yeshiva in 1884 at the age of 18, where he became close to the rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (the Netziv). Although he stayed at the yeshiva for only a year and a half, the Netziv has been quoted as saying that if the Volozhin yeshiva had been founded just to educate Rav Kook, it would have been worthwhile. During his time in the yeshiva, he studied under Rabbi Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim, (also known as the Aderet), the rabbi of Ponevezh (today's Panevėžys, Lithuania) and later Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Jerusalem. In 1887, at the age of 23, Kook entered his first rabbinical position as rabbi of Zaumel, Lithuania. In 1888, his wife died, and his father-in-law convinced him to marry her cousin, Raize-Rivka, the daughter of the Aderet's twin brother. In 1895 Rav Kook became the rabbi of Bauska Jewish community. Between 1901 and 1904, he published three articles which anticipate the fully developed philosophy which he developed in the Land of Israel.