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A Mission to Israel
- Abstract
Jerusalem, July 1962.
I’M ABOUT to be unmasked. It started last night at the house of Reb David Cohen, “the Nazarite” as he is called here, because of the vows he has taken to refrain from cutting his hair, drinking wine, or speaking on the Sabbath. We had just finished a lesson in Rabbi Kuk’s The Lights of Holiness when a short, balding man pushed his way through the crowded dining room that serves as a combination synagogue and classroom. As he stood there, whispering to the Nazarite and nodding in my direction, I knew the conversation had to do with the announcement this week that I am to be the first Administrator of the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem-a “missionary,” according to the Orthodox press, bearing a brand of Judaism even more dangerous than Christianity. I suppose I’ll soon be frozen out of these sessions at Reb David’s home and I’ll miss them, for the Nazarite is the man who edited and arranged most of the books of Abraham Isaac Kuk, the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine. But I am even more concerned about the reaction of Zvi Yehudah Kuk, the son of the former Chief Rabbi. The next time I go there will somebody whisper to him, too, and say that a Reform Rabbi who studies with Zvi Yehudah Kuk is for that reason even more dangerous?
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