[This review is based on the review that appeared in the Book supplement in this past week's Jewish Press. Subsequent to writing this review, I had the pleasure of meeting Rav Naor, and now attend his weekly chabura.]
Although Rav
Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook was one of the most important Jewish thinkers of
the last few centuries, there are many Jews who are unfamiliar with his
worldview and writings. There are a number of reasons why this is so. Some
think of him only as an early leader of the religious Zionist movement,
evidently unaware of the spiritual and philosophical breadth and depth that his
writings cover. Those who are aware of the scope of his writing, have
oftentimes been prevented from exploring those writings, due to the fact that
he wrote in a poetic and flowery Hebrew,
challenging even to the native Israeli. This unfamiliarity is particularly
unfortunate, as Rav Kook offers ideas and insights of great importance to the
modern Jew, in areas as varied as humanism, biblical criticism, and the
religious-secular divide.
In the
early 90s Rabbi Bezalel Naor, himself a serious and prolific thinker and writer, as well as
one of the preeminent scholars of Rav Kook’s thought, wrote and published an
English translation of Rav Kook’s Orot. Orot, which was originally published in
1920, offered a new, almost prophetic vision of where the Jewish people were
headed and how they would get there. Rav Kook provided a religious framework
for how to understand the “secular” Zionist movement, an emphasis on the value
of a religious and physical revival, the import of “secular” studies, as
well as a sense of great hope to those who feared the growing religious-secular
divide. For many who wished to understand Rav Kook, Naor’s translation opened
the door to this profound and prolific thinker.
Naor’s
translation became an instant classic, not only due to the skill with which he
translated Rav Kook’s words, but also for the fascinating introduction in which
Naor traced the history of the publishing of Orot and the subsequent
controversy which arose in pre-war Palestine. To top it all off, Naor included
more than 80 pages of endnotes tracing the origins of Rav Kook’s thoughts,
which included quotes and allusions from Tanach, Talmud Bavli and Yerushalmi,
midrashim, the Zohar, as well as from thinkers as varied as the Rambam and
Rebbe Yehuda HaLevi, the Maharal, the Baal HaTanya, Rav Nachman, and Hegel and
Nietzsche to boot. For many years, the original translation has been out of
print. After more than 20 years, it has been re-published, this time by Maggid
Books, a subsidiary of Koren Publishers.
In addition to all of the above mentioned bonuses, the
new edition has various additions that will make it even more valuable to those
who wish to undertake the challenging, but rewarding path of exploring Rav
Kook’s thought. Most prominent among these additions is the inclusion of the
Hebrew text alongside Naor’s translation (this is only available in the hardcover edition). This has the added benefit of making
it possible to try and read Orot in its original language, while at the same
time, offering a translation for the more challenging words and phrases. Naor
has written a new introduction for this publication which includes even more
fascinating stories and information about the publication of Orot, things Naor
has discovered over the past 20 years. The new edition has even more endnotes
than the original, as Shemonah Kevatzim, eight of Rav Kook’s original
journals, have been published in the last two decades. These journals offer
readers a glimpse into the original form in which Rav Kook thought of the
ideas, that ultimately became Orot. Naor has gone through these journals and
carefully notes the differences between the journals and the book that was
ultimately published. While some of these differences are merely semantic,
others show how carefully Rav Kook, and his son Rav Tzvi Yehuda, who was his
publisher, weighed his words, as they attempted to get across a subtle point,
or soften the opposition of his adversaries. Finally, Naor made the decision to
provide the chapters of Orot with English titles and to begin each chapter with
a brief summary of its contents. He chose to do so, following in the footsteps
of some of Rav Kook’s editors, due to the fact that Rav Kook wrote in a poetic,
free-flowing manner, with little, if any, thought given to how it might be
understood by his readers.
There’s
very little to quibble with in this incredible new edition. I would suggest
that future editions have the numbers for the footnotes on the Hebrew side as well
as the English. Additionally, it would be helpful to have the Hebrew and
English page breaks align more closely,
to make it easier for those who are making use of both sides of the page.
I am
quite certain that, just as the original translation became a must read for
those who wished to understand Rav Kook, the same will be said for the new
edition. Naor has done the incredible, offering a translation that is, at once,
comprehensible and useful for the novice, while at the same time offering even
those who already are most familiar with Rav Kook’s thought and writings, many
new avenues of thought to consider.
Click here to order the hardcover edition, here to order the softcover edition, and here for the Kindle edition.
No comments:
Post a Comment