This event has passed.

The Poetry of Rav Kook: Finding The Lights in A New Dark Age

Name: The Poetry of Rav Kook: Finding The Lights in A New Dark Age
Start: 2017-10-25T19:00:00-07:00
End: 2017-10-25T20:30:00-07:00
Location: Congregation Beth Tefillah

October 25, 2017 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm MST

Event Navigation

Registration for this event is now closed.

Walks ups will be accepted.

Rav Kook (1865 – 1935) was a towering leader of the Jewish renaissance in the Land of Israel and a profound master in every area of classic Jewish scholarship. His philosophic mysticism contained a hard sense of reality, while also having profound optimism. In this lecture, we shall explore the unique features of Rav Kook’s thought within his personal poems, which he would awaken to write in the middle of the night!

Rabbi Daniel Landes, the scion of an old distinguished Jerusalem rabbinic line, was recently recognized as one of the Forward 50 in 2016. The Forward wrote: “Rabbi Daniel Landes pushed the envelope of Modern Orthodoxy in Israel by ordaining women rabbis in an Orthodox-style ceremony. The former head of the Pardes Institute, Rav Landes has been one of the leaders proposing new forms of gender equality within observant Jewish settings.”

According to Amanda Borshel-Dan of the Times of Israel, the ordination ceremony was “a watershed in the movement to introduce female religious leaders into more traditional corners of Judaism. Rabbi Landes has been described as a modern-day Resh Lakish of the Talmudic era — an independent thinker who is part gladiator, part teacher, and whose stances often run counter to the entrenched establishment.”

Rabbi Landes was a student of Rav Kook’s major disciples, including his son Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook, the Nazir, as well as Rav David Cohen, Landes’ uncles the Chief Rabbi of Israel Rav Avrum Shapira, and the Tzaddik of Jerusalem Rav Aryeih Levin, and Landes’ grandfather Rav Menachem Zion Sacks.

Rabbi Landes was a founding faculty member of the Simon Wiesenthal Center as well as Yeshiva Los Angeles, a Professor of Jewish Law at Loyola Law School, and a Judge on the Los Angeles Orthodox Beit Din. For over two decades, he built the Pardes Institute and served as its Director, giving the senior Talmud class. He has been a longtime teacher of the Wexner Foundation.