Date and Place: 19 Shevat 5669 (1909), Yafo
Recipient: Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, Rabbi and Rosh Yeshiva of Slutzk. Rav Isser Zalman overlapped with Rav Kook in the Volozhin yeshiva and was also a great lover of Eretz Yisrael. Years later, they would reunite in Yerushalayim, with Rav Kook as the Chief Rabbi and Rav Isser Zalman as the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Etz Chaim, where many of Rav Kook’s most prominent supporters taught and studied. Rav Meltzer was the author of Even Ha’ezel on the Rambam, and, of significance here, was the editor of the Torah Journal, Yagdil Torah.
Body: I have received the Yagdil Torah journal, including your open letter. During these days of great preoccupation with the holy work that is placed on my weak shoulders, which is so tiring, I have not secured the strength to pay my debt of respect and love for you, my respected colleague and thank you for the desirable flowers (the journal) with which you have honored me with the first edition. I hope that the publication will spread and that it will be adorned with many and great desired fruit, people who support your hand and those who stand behind your flag, helping in practical and spiritual ways. Then the matter will grow, and there will be offshoots to increase Torah and widen its goals.
To show my affection for your good enterprise, I will write a short remark, regarding a matter that affects us significantly in our holy work of growing the Jewish community of the Holy Land, which we pray Hashem will give to His nation with His light, opening gates of redemption and the lines of light of the aura of Hashem’s decree of salvation and mercy. This will occur when the clear end of days comes to the mountains of Israel. Eretz Yisrael is beginning to bear branches and fruit for the holy nation, who return from exile, and increasingly are settling in the place where we pitched our tents in days of old. (The referenced halachic ideas of Rav Kook are found in Mishpat Kohen, siman 21.)
Now let me write a bit about the second stated purpose of your journal (to give inspiration to those with a Torah background who have been drawn to the works of those who are not true to Torah beliefs). Undeniably, there is great value in literature that is presented with all of the modern tools in order to strengthen and repair the many problems in the House of Israel. However, oh friends whom I love with heart and soul, we must be ready to provide more than words of encouragement that come from the heart – which are indeed sometimes good. Rather we mainly require words of intellectual depth coming from the thinking mind.
The ability to do this will return to us when we pave a path for the elite, outstandingly talented among the young Torah scholars and make sure that they are conversant in the in-depth part of the Torah (i.e., Kabbalistic/philosophical thought), which is the source of every lofty thought and every delicate and holy feeling. By increasing knowledge in this abandoned part of the Torah, and by adorning it, in all of its subjects and tools, we will quickly create men of the heart with great power, who will be able to speak in the city gates ideas that will return a spirit of life to our nation’s heart. Our nation is fainting from terrible thirst for the word of Hashem.
It is true that not all minds or all hearts are fit for lofty spiritual intellectuality and for internal holy emotions, which I mention. However, Israel is not a widower (i.e., we have many resources). From the choice, young, holy “flowers” of Torah scholars there will always be, and certainly now when such skills are crucial, a significant number of people whose spirit leans in the direction of serious study of spirituality, with great toil and intellectual depth, desire, and internal happiness.
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