Rab­bi Abra­ham Isaac HaCo­hen Kook (1986 – 1935), the cel­e­brat­ed first Chief Rab­bi of pre-State Israel, is rec­og­nized as one of the most extra­or­di­nary Jew­ish thinkers of his time. His fame as a schol­ar, poet, rab­bini­cal author­i­ty, and great leader was eclipsed by his promi­nence as a reli­gious mys­tic. As a mys­tic he searched for uni­ty in all aspects of the world and of life. He wrote many books on a wide range of sub­jects, always with a philosophical/​kabbalistic frame of ref­er­ence. He was blessed with a poet’s felic­i­ty with lan­guage and nev­er had to rewrite anything. 

Rab­bi Chanan Mor­ri­son stud­ied at the Mer­caz HaR­av Yeshi­va (start­ed by Rav Kook in 1924) for sev­er­al years and became enchant­ed with Rav Kook’s writ­ings. Gold From the Land of Israel is a com­pan­ion to the week­ly Torah por­tion based on the writ­ings of Rav Kook. Rab­bi Mor­ri­son runs RavKook​.n3​.net, a web­site ded­i­cat­ed to pre­sent­ing the Torah com­men­tary of Rav Kook. Trans­lat­ing any of these writ­ings is an ardu­ous task. Instead, Rab­bi Mor­ri­son has sum­ma­rized basic ideas and pre­sent­ed them in a for­mat acces­si­ble to the con­tem­po­rary Eng­lish lan­guage reader. 

This book, with sev­er­al short essays on each par­sha, elu­ci­dates his thoughts on many fas­ci­nat­ing top­ics, includ­ing: Can we rec­on­cile the Torah’s account of cre­ation with mod­ern sci­ence? What is the Torah’s view on veg­e­tar­i­an­ism? What is the pur­pose of death? Why do bad things hap­pen the Third Tem­ple have ani­mal sac­ri­fices? Who is God? How can one attain joy in serv­ing God? How should we bal­ance our time between Torah study and work? Why must kohan­im avoid cemeteries? 

These snip­pets from the vast writ­ings of Rav Kook are indeed gold. Hope­ful­ly, the read­er will be inspired to seek out the orig­i­nal writ­ings con­tained in the help­ful bibliography.