Sunday, August 16, is 3 Elul. It is not only the yahrzeit of Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, the first chief rabbi of Israel and the greatest spiritual architect of religious Zionism. It is also an invitation to travel. Not merely through his books, but through landscapes.
The winding country roads of Latvia and Lithuania, lined with silver birch forests and bordered by quiet rivers, still seem to whisper his story. The scent of wet earth after a summer shower, the rustling of flax fields in the wind, the silence of forgotten Jewish cemeteries, all preserve echoes of a man who believed that holiness was not hidden from the changing world but revealed through it.
To understand Rabbi Kook, opening his books Orot or Igrot HaRe’iyah is not enough. We must walk where he walked, breathe the same northern air, and stand before the remnants of the communities that shaped his soul. Several Israeli religious tour operators organize heritage journeys following Rabbi Kook’s footsteps. Their tours continue to attract Jewish travelers eager to discover not only the biography of a towering rabbinic figure but also the landscapes from which his revolutionary ideas emerged.
Griva
Nearly 160 years ago, a baby was born in the small town of Griva, today a neighborhood of Daugavpils in southeastern Latvia. His parents named him Abraham Isaac, but affectionately called him “Yatzki.”
When little Yatzki was only three, he attended the local cheder. There he invented a game: He lined up the children with their small satchels across their shoulders, as though preparing for a long expedition. Then he asked them to call out: “Where are we going?” And he would shout back: “To Eretz Israel!”
It was a child’s game, yet in hindsight it seems almost prophetic.
That game took place in the courtyard of the Kaddish Synagogue, which still stands today after careful restoration. Here, his parents used to pray, and the young prodigy astonished the community. At nine, he was already delivering sermons from its pulpit, and by 11 he had begun writing a commentary on the Song of Songs.
Visitors to the synagogue at Cietokšna 38 today will find commemorative plaques honoring Rabbi Kook on the synagogue’s exterior. Joining the Mincha prayer service inside these ancient walls is more than a religious experience. It feels like stepping into the opening chapter of a remarkable life.
At 15, Rabbi Kook continued his studies in the Panevežys Yeshiva. There, Rabbi Israel Meir Hacohen, known as the Chafetz Chaim, gathered a select group of exceptionally gifted students who were priests and assigned them to immerse themselves in Seder Kodashim, the Talmudic tractates devoted to the Temple service and sacrificial rites. His vision was that when the Messiah came and the Temple was rebuilt, the Jewish people would already have scholars thoroughly versed in its sacred service. Rabbi Kook was chosen to join this elite circle and devoted himself to mastering the laws governing the priests’ service in the Holy Temple.
The Chafetz Chaim later arranged his marriage to the daughter of Rabbi Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim (the Aderet), then the rabbi of Panevežys.
Žeimelis
After his marriage, Rabbi Kook became rabbi of Žeimelis, a quiet agricultural village in northern Lithuania.
The countryside has hardly changed. White stone cottages still line the roads. Orange brick farmhouses stand beside wooden barns. Vast flax fields shimmer beneath enormous skies, interrupted only by rows of trees tracing the edges of streams and small lakes. Now and then, herds of deer emerge from the forest and bound gracefully across the open fields.
Most of the town’s Jewish residents were farmers. For the first time, the brilliant scholar confronted the practical questions of daily agricultural life: The shemita (sabbatical) year restrictions, milking cows on Shabbat, and the countless legal dilemmas of families whose livelihood depended on the land.
These encounters profoundly shaped his halachic thinking. The famous heter mechirah, the temporary sale of agricultural land during the sabbatical year, grew from a deep understanding of hardworking farmers whose faith and survival depended equally on the fields before them. Not from abstract legal theory. For Rabbi Kook, Jewish law was never meant to remain confined within the walls of beit midrash. It had to walk through muddy fields, endure rain and drought, and accompany people where life actually unfolded.
His former home no longer survives, but its foundations are marked by white stones at Bauskes Street 7.
Across from his home, once stood the synagogue where Rabbi Kook studied the Jerusalem Talmud and wrote the first chapters of the book Itur Sofrim, a place that helped shape his intellectual and spiritual world. When I stood among the remaining stones, I found myself regretting that I had not brought a volume of Igrot HaRe’iyah. There seemed no more fitting place to read his words than the place where many of his earliest ideas first took shape.
Rabbi Kook lived seven years in Žeimelis, which also witnessed profound personal sorrow. His first wife died here at a young age. Her gravestone, discovered years ago lying abandoned on the ground, has since been restored. The small Jewish cemetery has become another stop for Jewish travelers.
Here he remarried. Here his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, was born, later becoming head of Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva and one of the foremost spiritual leaders of religious Zionism (and my rosh yeshiva).
Bauska (Boysk)
From rural Žeimelis, Rabbi Kook moved to Bauska in southern Latvia. It was an entirely different world. More than half the city’s residents were Jewish, yet not all observed Jewish law. Traditional scholars lived alongside merchants, intellectuals, Zionists, laborers, members of the Bund, and young Jews already drifting away from religious life.
Years earlier, Rabbi Kook had often traveled to Bauska to study with Rabbi Mordechai Eliasberg, one of the leading figures of the Hibbat Zion movement and an early founder of the Mizrachi movement.
When Rabbi Eliasberg passed away, the young Rabbi Kook delivered the eulogy. His words so deeply impressed the community that they immediately offered him the city’s rabbinate.
He declined.
Only five years later did he finally accept.
The Jews of Žeimelis loved him so dearly that they reportedly organized a wagon drivers’ strike in an attempt to prevent his departure. Eventually, Bauska sent its own drivers, and the young rabbi began the next chapter of his life.
The central square of Bauska still looks remarkably similar to photographs from Rabbi Kook’s era. Nearby stands a memorial built on the site of his synagogue. The synagogue itself was torched by the Nazis.
Currently, there are no Jews in Bauska, but Jewish public buildings such as the school and the slaughterhouse remain and are worth visiting.
It was in Bauska that one of Rabbi Kook’s most influential ideas fully matured. Ten years he was living in Bauska. He encountered Jews who no longer observed Shabbat and mitzvot, yet he recognized their idealism, their devotion, and their love for the Jewish people and their ancestral homeland. He refused to define them as enemies. To him, even the secular pioneers draining swamps and cultivating barren land were partners in redemption. Their language differed from his; their purpose did not.
Following the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, a rumor spread claiming that the Congress had resolved that “Zionism has nothing to do with religion.” (It was later revealed to be fake news, circulated by those whose position had been rejected in the vote).
In response, most rabbinic leaders chose to distance themselves from the Zionist movement. Rabbi Kook, however, challenged this approach and argued that there was a better alternative: a religious Zionism that united Jewish faith with Jewish nationhood rather than separating them. The estrangement of today’s haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community from compulsory service in the army has its roots in that historic moment, when many came to feel that Zionism was “not ours.”
At the age of 39, Rabbi Kook stood at a crossroads. He had to choose between serving as the spiritual supervisor (mashgiach) at the prestigious Telshe Yeshiva, or becoming the rabbi of Jaffa. He chose to make aliyah to Eretz Israel, and the rest is history.
Rabbi Kook’s contemporaries recognized his extraordinary stature. When derogatory remarks were spoken against him, the Chafetz Chaim reportedly declared that such words warranted the traditional act of rending one’s garments in grief. The Chazon Ish likewise refused to join those who opposed Jerusalem’s chief rabbi, saying simply: “Know that he is holy and pure.”
Returning with different eyes
Something changes after completing this journey. Returning to Rabbi Kook’s writings, one no longer encounters abstract ideas alone, but the landscapes that shaped them. Griva inspired his vision, Žeimelis taught agriculture, and Bauska deepened his understanding of sociology. From these quiet towns, he carried to Jaffa and Jerusalem a spiritual vision that sought to unite heaven and earth.
Today, most of the synagogues have disappeared, the rabbis’ homes are gone, and the communities that once flourished have faded into history. Yet among the birch forests, quiet rivers, and weathered stones, their spirit still lingers. Following Rabbi Kook’s footsteps across Latvia and Lithuania is more than a heritage tour. It is a journey to the birthplace of an idea: that faith and modernity, Torah and daily life, can enrich rather than oppose one another.
Perhaps that is Rabbi Kook’s greatest legacy. Not only the books he wrote, but the hope he carried. His footsteps remind us that every generation can rediscover its past, draw strength from it, and continue the journey toward a brighter future.
The author is the creator of the JewishTraveler blog.