Zvi Yehuda Kook

Zvi Yehuda Kook was born in 1891 in Žeimelis

Kook was born in 1891 in Žeimelis, then in the Russian Empire, where his father Abraham Isaac Kook served as rabbi. He was named after his maternal grandfather. In 1896 the family moved to Boisk, Latvia, where he studied Talmud with private teachers.

In 1904 the family moved to Jaffa after his father became the city's chief rabbi. He studied at the Torat Haim yeshiva in Jerusalem and later with his father, who remained his main teacher. From 1908 he edited his father's writings, a task he kept up for the rest of his life.

Before World War I he went to Halberstadt, Germany, to teach and study. When the war broke out in 1914 he was arrested as a Russian subject and later released. He joined his father in Switzerland and helped promote his father's Degel Yerushalayim movement.

He returned to Palestine and taught at the Netzakh Israel school. In 1922 he married Chava Leah Hutner, who died childless in 1944, and he did not remarry. From 1923 he was administrative director of Mercaz HaRav, and from 1952 until his death in 1982 he was its rosh yeshiva.

His teachings influenced the Gush Emunim movement, founded by his students, and the religious settlement movement in the West Bank and Gaza.