Towards the end of 1939, the clouds of a future terrible war were already gathered in Europe, and much of the Jewish world was about to be utterly destroyed. Even in the relatively distant Land of Israel, Jews followed events in Europe with worry, and many likely added special prayers for the protection and rescue of their relatives still on the doomed continent.
This sense of urgency appears to have driven the decision of Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook, the son of the country’s first post-Ottoman Chief Rabbi – Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook or the Ra’ayah - to move quickly and put out his father’s siddur, Olat Ra’ayah, even though the siddur was still undergoing revisions and editing. Thus did the siddur see print in the middle of the month of Av, 1939 – three weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland.
The fear of the coming future that sped up this siddur’s publication was hinted at in Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah’s introduction to the book, where he stresses that the siddur appears “in this great hour which we are so occupied with in efforts of prayer,” and in his decision to not include the sources of the halachahs mentioned throughout the siddur: “since it has become clear that it must be divided into two parts (if the sources were to be added) and slow down the printing, primarily due to the circumstances of the situation outside, the hour is pressed now to finish this first part.”
He was as good as his word: the first advertisements for the siddur’s first volume, which included the prayers for weekdays, appeared in the religious Zionist daily Hatzofe already on August 4, 1939. The second volume, which included Shabbat and holiday prayers as well as various additions, would only come out five years later.
The siddur was originally published by the Association for Publishing the Books of Hara’ayah Kook, headed by religious Zionist leader Rabbi Meir Bar Ilan, and with the support of Mossad Harav Kook. Its appearance was naturally mostly noticed by the religious Zionist press, where the first volume was offered for sale in cloth binding. However, it was quickly also mentioned in Haaretz’s New Books section, as well as at length in Ha-Olam, the official paper of the World Zionist Organization, a few years later. According to this survey, the local Bnei Akiva branch in Jerusalem formed a regular class for learning the new siddur.
Rav Kook the elder had begun his commentary on Jewish prayer while residing in London, during the second half of WWI. However, according to his son, he continued to work on it from time to time after returning to the Land of Israel until shortly before his death.
Despite making significant efforts, he ultimately only managed to complete the work for the first half of the siddur – including the hashkamah prayers for the morning, the korbanot, and some of the pesukei dezimra prayers for weekdays and Shabbat (“when his hand stopped writing on this, ending at the verse ‘Thanks to God, for forever is His mercy’”).
Therefore, his son attached “likutim” or collections to the remaining parts of the siddur, taken from the Ra’ayah’s extensive and rich corpus of writing, and dealing directly with the relevant passages. To this Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah then added four preparatory chapters to the prayer, the prayer order itself, as well as short, final halachas based on the rulings of the Shulchan Aruch, Rema, Mishnah Berurah, and the Chochmat Adam. In a few places, he also added the halachic rulings of the Ra’ayah’s father-in-law, the Aderet, because “it is convenient for him, for both of them, that their words meet and connect – then as now.”
The prayer itself – which like other such siddurim, seems to sometimes be accompanying the commentary, rather than the other way around – appears in nusach Ashkenaz, which the Ra’ayah himself prayed in. This was also done while relying on details appearing in the siddur of the Shelah, which Rav Kook himself used, “and all of it, the entirety of the nusach, is aimed at the customary and fixed according to the view of the Gra, by us in our Holy Land, in the Land of Israel.”
The native character of the siddur was emphasized in additional ways, too: the decision to include the priestly blessing of Birkat Kohanim for Shacharit on weekdays, the inclusion of the separation of terumot and ma’asrot for fruits and vegetables along with other commanded blessings, and the inclusion of the blessing of “Matziv Gevul Almanah” [blessing for seeing shuls, especially in the Land of Israel, that are built and used] alongside the blessings of seeing and hearing positive things, which are said in any place and any time.
Like many of the “commentary siddurim” that are published, few seem to actually use Olat Ra’ayah on a daily basis – even if they pray in its nusach. That said, the siddur does serve as a source of study and inquiry into various parts of the author’s teaching, some of them unique to prayer and others far broader and deeper than that.
Either way, since its first, rushed appearance, the siddur has been printed many more times ever since, reflecting the spiritual world and concerns of the Ra’ayah and the hard work of his son.
Dr. Reuven Gafni is a senior lecturer at the Land of Israel Department at Kinneret College. He specializes in the field of synagogues and religion in the Land of Israel in the modern era, and the relationship between Jewish religion, culture, and national identity in the Land of Israel.