Orot HaKodesh (Lights of Holiness)

About Orot HaKodesh (Lights of Holiness)

Orot HaKodesh, literally Lights of Holiness, is the four-volume systematic spiritual treatise of Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), compiled posthumously from his private notebooks by his disciple David Cohen, known by the title HaNazir (the Nazirite) from his ascetic practice of allowing his hair and beard to grow uncut and abstaining from wine in fulfillment of a self-imposed Nazirite vow. The work is the most ambitious modern Jewish mystical work and the definitive expression of Kook's mature thought, but it differs from his other major works in being not a book that Kook wrote and published himself but a compilation that Cohen produced from the master's manuscripts over the four decades following Kook's death in 1935.

Kook had kept private notebooks throughout his rabbinic career, recording mystical reflections, theological meditations, prayers, poems, and short essays as they came to him during periods of contemplative withdrawal. The notebooks were spiritual journals more than systematic compositions, and Kook had no specific plan to publish them as a single work. They were produced over the course of three decades in many different locations — Latvia, Jaffa, Switzerland, London, and finally Jerusalem — and they reflected the changing concerns of his life and the unfolding of his mystical vision in response to the historical events through which he was living. By the time of his death in 1935, the notebooks filled many volumes in his small handwriting and contained materials that ranged across the entire spectrum of Jewish mystical thought.

David Cohen had been Kook's most devoted disciple from 1915, when he met Kook in Switzerland during the master's wartime exile, until Kook's death twenty years later. Cohen had been a brilliant student of philosophy and Jewish thought before he met Kook, having studied with Hermann Cohen at Marburg and with several other major academic teachers, but the encounter with Kook in Switzerland transformed his life. He became Kook's closest student, accompanied him to London during the war years, and followed him to Jerusalem after the war. Cohen took the Nazirite vow during his time with Kook as an expression of his commitment to the spiritual path that his master represented, and the title HaNazir became attached to him for the rest of his life.

After Kook's death, Cohen took on the task of editing and publishing the master's notebooks. The project was extraordinarily demanding because the notebooks were not organized for publication and contained material that ranged across many themes and many levels of difficulty. Cohen had to make editorial decisions about which materials to include, how to arrange them into a coherent structure, where to provide explanatory notes, and how to handle the many places where Kook's manuscript was difficult to read or where the meaning was unclear. The first volume of Orot HaKodesh appeared in Jerusalem in 1938, three years after Kook's death. The second volume followed in 1938 as well, the third in 1963, and the fourth was completed by Cohen's son Shaar Yashuv Cohen and other students after the Nazir's death in 1972 and was published in 1990. The four volumes together represent the most systematic and most extensive presentation of Kook's mystical thought.

The four volumes are organized thematically rather than chronologically. Cohen extracted reflections on related themes from many different notebooks and arranged them together to form chapters and sections that addressed unified subjects. Volume one addresses the foundations of mystical experience and the structure of spiritual knowledge. Volume two addresses the relationship between the human soul and the divine reality, including the doctrine of the multi-leveled soul and the dynamics of mystical union. Volume three addresses the moral and ethical dimensions of the spiritual life, including the relationship between religious practice and inner spiritual development. Volume four addresses the cosmic and metaphysical dimensions of the spiritual life, including the doctrine of cosmic unity and the unification of all opposites in the divine reality.

The relationship between Orot HaKodesh and Kook's other writings is complex. Orot, published during Kook's lifetime in 1920, contains the more compact and more historically focused materials that Kook himself selected for publication. Orot HaTeshuvah, on the doctrine of return-or-repentance, contains another set of materials that Kook himself prepared for publication. Orot HaKodesh contains the broader and more systematic materials that Kook had not himself prepared for publication and that Cohen had to extract and organize from the notebooks. The three works together form Kook's mature canon, but they have different characters and should be read with awareness of the different editorial situations from which they emerged.

Content

Orot HaKodesh is organized into four volumes, each addressing a major dimension of Kook's mystical thought. The volumes were not composed as a single continuous work but were assembled by David Cohen the Nazir from Kook's private notebooks during the four decades following the master's death in 1935. The arrangement reflects Cohen's editorial vision of how the materials could be organized to display Kook's thought as a coherent system.

Volume one addresses the foundations of mystical experience and the structure of spiritual knowledge. Cohen begins with reflections on the nature of mystical insight and the methods through which it can be cultivated, drawing on Kook's notebook entries about the inner experience of receiving divine wisdom and the disciplines that prepare the soul for such experience. The volume develops the doctrine that mystical knowledge is not separate from ordinary intellectual knowledge but represents a higher and more integrated form of the same human capacity to know reality. The opening sections also address the relationship between revealed truth and rational inquiry, arguing that the two are complementary rather than competing modes of access to the divine. Volume one establishes the conceptual foundations on which the later volumes build.

Volume two addresses the relationship between the human soul and the divine reality. The volume develops the doctrine of the multi-leveled soul, drawing on the traditional Kabbalistic teaching about the five levels (nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, yechidah) and integrating it with insights from modern psychology and philosophy. Kook traces the dynamics of inner spiritual life and shows how the different levels of the soul interact with one another, how each level has its own characteristic experiences and its own characteristic obstacles, and how the spiritual work of life consists in the gradual integration of all levels into a unified life. The volume also addresses the doctrine of mystical union, distinguishing different grades of union and explaining how the soul ascends through them in the course of spiritual development.

Volume three addresses the moral and ethical dimensions of the spiritual life. Cohen draws on Kook's notebook entries about the relationship between religious practice and inner spiritual development, showing how the observance of the commandments contributes to the cultivation of inner virtue and how inner virtue in turn supports the proper performance of religious practice. The volume develops the doctrine that ethics and mysticism are continuous rather than separate domains, and that the moral perfection of the soul is the necessary preparation for the higher mystical experiences. Volume three is in some ways the most practical of the four volumes and provides the bridge between Kook's metaphysical reflections and the actual spiritual life of the practitioner.

Volume four addresses the cosmic and metaphysical dimensions of the spiritual life. The volume develops the doctrine of cosmic unity, teaching that the apparent diversity and conflict of the universe is moving toward a final unification in which all things will be revealed as expressions of the single divine reality. The volume also develops the doctrine of the unity of opposites, the principle that the apparent contradictions of finite experience are not ultimate but are reconciled in the higher unity of the divine reality. Volume four is the most metaphysically ambitious of the volumes and represents the culmination of the systematic vision that the first three volumes have prepared. It was completed and published only after the Nazir's death in 1972 and appeared in 1990, more than half a century after the death of Kook himself.

Throughout the four volumes, the materials retain the aphoristic and reflective character of Kook's notebook entries. Cohen's editorial work consisted in arrangement and grouping rather than in rewriting, and the reader of Orot HaKodesh encounters the same dense lyrical Hebrew that characterizes Kook's other published works. The reader must approach the text as a sustained meditation rather than as a systematic argument, and the systematic structure that Cohen has imposed serves to organize the meditation rather than to replace it with a different form of writing.

Key Teachings

The doctrine of the unity of all opposites in the divine reality is the central metaphysical teaching of Orot HaKodesh and the principle that organizes Kook's entire mystical vision. Kook teaches that the apparent contradictions of finite experience — between sacred and profane, religious and secular, particular and universal, traditional and modern, body and soul, individual and collective — are not ultimate but are reconciled in the higher unity of the divine reality. The spiritual work of life consists in seeing through the appearances of opposition to the underlying unity, and the practitioner who acquires this vision is freed from the false either-or choices that characterize ordinary religious and political thought. This doctrine of the unity of opposites provides the philosophical foundation for Kook's ability to integrate apparently incompatible positions into a single synthetic vision.

The doctrine of the multi-leveled soul develops the traditional Kabbalistic teaching about the five levels of the soul (nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, yechidah) and adds Kook's own insights into the dynamics of inner spiritual life. Each level of the soul has its own characteristic experiences, its own characteristic obstacles, and its own characteristic relationships to the divine reality. The lower levels are concerned with the practical and emotional aspects of life, the middle levels with moral and intellectual development, and the higher levels with the directly transpersonal dimensions of mystical experience. The spiritual work of life consists in the gradual actualization of each level and the integration of all levels into a unified life that draws on all of them simultaneously.

The doctrine of cosmic unification teaches that the apparent diversity and conflict of the universe is moving toward a final unification in which all things will be revealed as expressions of the single divine reality. The historical process is one dimension of this larger cosmic process of unification, and the political-historical events of contemporary Zionism are moments in the unfolding of this larger movement. The cosmic unification is not a future event that will replace the present diversity but a process that is always already occurring beneath the surface of finite experience and that becomes increasingly visible as history unfolds.

The doctrine of teshuvah as cosmic process develops the rabbinic concept of return-or-repentance in a mystical-cosmic direction. For Kook, teshuvah is not merely the moral correction of individual sin but the larger process through which the entire created order returns to its source. The return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel is one expression of this cosmic teshuvah, the spiritual return of individual souls to their divine source is another expression of the same underlying process, and the eventual return of all created reality to its source in the divine unity is the final completion of the process.

The doctrine of the relationship between revealed truth and rational inquiry teaches that the two are complementary rather than competing modes of access to the divine. Reason approaches the divine reality from the side of finite consciousness; revelation approaches it from the side of the divine itself. The two modes meet in the spiritual experience of the human being who is capable of both. Kook's affirmation of this complementarity allowed him to engage with modern philosophical and scientific thought without abandoning the traditional sources of religious truth and provided the foundation for the religious-Zionist engagement with secular learning that has been one of the distinctive features of the movement.

The doctrine of the integration of body and soul teaches that the physical and spiritual dimensions of human existence are not opposed but are continuous parts of a single created reality. The body has its own spiritual significance and is not merely a temporary container for the soul. The work of redemption includes the redemption of the body and the physical world, not merely the liberation of the soul from physical existence. This doctrine provides the metaphysical foundation for Kook's positive evaluation of the physical labor of building the Land and for his appreciation of the bodily dimensions of religious life.

The doctrine of the harmonization of universal and particular teaches that the Jewish vocation is not in competition with the universal vocation of humanity but is the necessary particular form through which the universal vocation can be realized. The renewal of the Jewish people as a national entity in the Land is therefore not a narrowly nationalist project but a contribution to the universal redemption of all nations.

Translations

Orot HaKodesh has remained primarily a Hebrew work, and complete English translation has been a more limited project than the translation of Orot. The original Hebrew volumes were published in Jerusalem by the Mossad HaRav Kook publishing house between 1938 and 1990, with the first two volumes appearing in 1938 (three years after Kook's death), the third in 1963, and the fourth in 1990 (more than half a century after Kook's death and nearly two decades after the death of the editor David Cohen the Nazir). The Hebrew editions are the standard references for serious scholarly and traditional study and are widely available in religious-Zionist communities throughout Israel and the diaspora.

No complete English translation of all four volumes of Orot HaKodesh has been produced. Selected passages have been translated by various scholars and translators within their academic and devotional works, and these partial translations together provide English-speaking readers with access to many of the most important sections of the work even though no single comprehensive translation is available.

Bezalel Naor, who has produced the standard English translations of Kook's other major writings including Orot, has also translated selected passages from Orot HaKodesh in his various volumes of Kook materials. Naor's broader translation project has done more than any other resource to introduce Kook to English-speaking readers in the Orthodox, religious-Zionist, and academic worlds, and his treatment of Orot HaKodesh provides English speakers with significant access to the work even in the absence of a complete translation.

Ben Zion Bokser's earlier volume of Kook translations in the Classics of Western Spirituality series, published by Paulist Press in 1978, contains selections from Orot HaKodesh alongside other Kook writings. The Bokser translations were the first significant English versions of Kook's mystical writings and made the master's thought available to English-speaking readers in the late 1970s, though they have been partly superseded by the more recent and more extensive translations by Naor and others.

Lawrence Kaplan's many essays on Kook in academic journals and edited volumes, including the volume Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Jewish Spirituality co-edited with David Shatz and published by NYU Press in 1995, contain additional translations of selected passages from Orot HaKodesh within scholarly studies of Kook's thought.

The major scholarly studies of Kook in English provide substantial translations and analysis of Orot HaKodesh within their broader arguments. Yehudah Mirsky's Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution, published by Yale University Press in 2014, provides extensive discussion of the work within the context of Kook's life and thought. Benjamin Ish-Shalom's Rav Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook: Between Rationalism and Mysticism, published by SUNY Press in 1993 and translated from the original Hebrew, offers the most thorough academic treatment of Orot HaKodesh in English and is essential reading for any serious student of the work. Tamar Ross's Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism, published by Brandeis University Press in 2004, treats Kook's thought within the broader context of modern Orthodox Jewish thought and includes important discussion of the implications of Orot HaKodesh for contemporary religious questions.

Controversy

The controversies surrounding Orot HaKodesh are partly inherited from the broader controversy surrounding Kook's religious-Zionist project but also include some specific controversies related to the unique editorial situation of the work. Understanding these controversies requires understanding both the polemical environment of the religious-Zionist movement and the methodological questions raised by David Cohen's editorial reconstruction of Kook's notebooks.

The first controversy concerns the editorial method itself. Orot HaKodesh is unusual among the major works of modern Jewish mysticism in being not a book that the master wrote and published himself but a compilation that a disciple produced from the master's manuscripts after his death. David Cohen's editorial decisions about which materials to include, how to arrange them into thematic volumes, where to provide explanatory notes, and how to handle the many places where Kook's manuscript was difficult to read or where the meaning was unclear shaped the published text in significant ways. Some critics have questioned whether the published Orot HaKodesh accurately represents Kook's mature thought or whether it represents Cohen's interpretation of his master imposed on materials that were not necessarily intended to be read in the form they have received. Defenders of Cohen's editorial work argue that he was the master's most devoted disciple and that his judgment about the proper arrangement of the materials should be trusted, but the question continues to be discussed in scholarly and traditional circles.

The second controversy concerns the relationship between Orot HaKodesh and the still-unpublished portions of Kook's notebooks. Cohen included only a portion of the notebook material in the four volumes of Orot HaKodesh, and additional notebook material has continued to be published in subsequent decades by Cohen's son Shaar Yashuv Cohen, by other students of Kook's circle, and most recently by the academic-textual scholarship that has begun to publish critical editions of the original notebooks. Some of this additional material differs in significant ways from what was included in Orot HaKodesh, and the question of how the published Orot HaKodesh relates to the full notebook tradition has been the subject of ongoing scholarly investigation.

The third controversy concerns the strict Orthodox response to Kook's mystical-Zionist project as expressed in Orot HaKodesh. The same opposition that had attached to Orot during Kook's lifetime continued to attach to Orot HaKodesh after his death, and traditional Orthodox communities that rejected the religious-Zionist project also rejected the systematic mystical treatise that gave the project its philosophical foundation. The strict Orthodox critique focused particularly on the doctrine of the unity of opposites, which they saw as a dangerous form of mystical relativism that could be used to justify any position by claiming that it was reconciled with its opposite at a higher level. Defenders of Kook responded that the doctrine was a sophisticated philosophical-mystical teaching that had to be understood in its proper context and that the strict Orthodox reading missed the depth of the vision.

A fourth controversy concerns the use of Orot HaKodesh in the post-1967 settlement movement. Tzvi Yehuda Kook, the master's son, drew on Orot HaKodesh as well as on Orot for the theological framework within which he interpreted the territorial conquests of the Six-Day War, and the settlement movement that arose under his leadership claimed Orot HaKodesh as one of its foundational texts. The relationship between Kook's original mystical-philosophical project and the political-territorial application of his teachings has been a contested question in contemporary Jewish thought. Some readers regard the political application as a legitimate development of the original principles; others regard it as a distortion that goes beyond what Kook himself would have endorsed.

A fifth controversy concerns the contemporary feminist and progressive readings of Kook. Tamar Ross and other contemporary Jewish thinkers have drawn on Orot HaKodesh as a resource for thinking about how Orthodox Judaism can engage with modern questions about gender, equality, and social progress, and these contemporary readings have been controversial within the more strictly traditional segments of the religious-Zionist world.

Influence

The influence of Orot HaKodesh on Jewish life since the publication of its first volumes in 1938 has been pervasive within the religious-Zionist mystical tradition and significant within the broader academic and Orthodox Jewish worlds. The work is the most ambitious modern Jewish mystical treatise and provides the systematic foundation for the religious-Zionist mystical worldview that has shaped the inner life of generations of religious Jews in the State of Israel and the diaspora.

Within the religious-Zionist world, Orot HaKodesh is studied as a sacred text alongside Orot and the other Kook writings. The yeshivot of the religious-Zionist tradition — Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem, founded by Kook himself in 1924, and the network of Hesder yeshivot and post-1967 settlement yeshivot that grew up around it — make the study of Orot HaKodesh central to their advanced curricula. Students typically work through the four volumes over many years, reading individual sections under the guidance of senior teachers who can explain the technical Kabbalistic vocabulary and the historical-philosophical context that the dense lyrical Hebrew presupposes. The systematic structure that David Cohen imposed on the materials makes Orot HaKodesh more useful for sustained study than Orot, and serious students of Kook typically progress from Orot to Orot HaKodesh as they advance in their understanding of his thought.

The influence on the post-1967 settlement movement has been substantial. Tzvi Yehuda Kook drew on Orot HaKodesh as well as on Orot for the theological framework within which he interpreted the territorial conquests of the Six-Day War, and the settlement movement that arose under his leadership claimed Orot HaKodesh as one of its foundational texts. The students of Mercaz HaRav who provided the leadership for the settlement movement were formed by sustained immersion in Orot HaKodesh, and the religious worldview of the movement reflects the systematic mystical vision that the work develops.

The influence on academic scholarship has been considerable. Orot HaKodesh provides essential evidence for any serious study of Kook, of modern Jewish mysticism, of the relationship between traditional Kabbalah and modern philosophical thought, or of the religious-Zionist movement. Gershom Scholem recognized Kook as a major figure in the modern history of Jewish mysticism, and the subsequent generation of scholars including Yehudah Mirsky, Benjamin Ish-Shalom, Tamar Ross, Lawrence Kaplan, Jonathan Garb, Eliezer Schweid, and many others has built an extensive academic literature on Kook that draws extensively on Orot HaKodesh.

The influence on contemporary feminist and progressive Jewish thought has grown in recent decades as scholars including Tamar Ross have drawn on Orot HaKodesh as a resource for thinking about how Orthodox Judaism can engage with modern questions about gender, equality, and social progress. The doctrine of the unity of opposites and the doctrine of the integration of universal and particular have proved particularly useful for these contemporary readings, even though their application would have surprised Kook himself.

The influence on contemporary Jewish meditation and contemplative practice has grown as English-language teachers have drawn on the mystical reflections in Orot HaKodesh for guidance on modern Jewish spiritual life. The doctrine of the multi-leveled soul has been particularly influential in this context because it provides a structured framework for thinking about the inner dimensions of spiritual experience.

The influence on the broader Orthodox world has been more contested, with many non-Zionist and even anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews studying Kook with appreciation for his mystical depth even while rejecting the religious-Zionist applications of his teaching.

Significance

Orot HaKodesh provided modern Jewish mysticism with its most ambitious systematic treatise and made the breadth of Kook's mystical vision available to readers who might not have been able to assemble it from the more compact published works. The book's four volumes together cover the foundations of mystical experience, the structure of the soul, the moral dimensions of the spiritual life, and the cosmic-metaphysical horizon of the unification of all things in the divine reality, and the systematic arrangement made it possible for serious students to acquire a structured understanding of Kook's thought that the more aphoristic published works alone could not provide.

The doctrine of the unity of all opposites in the divine reality is the central metaphysical teaching of the work and the principle that organizes Kook's entire mystical vision. Kook teaches that the apparent contradictions of finite experience — between sacred and profane, religious and secular, particular and universal, traditional and modern — are not ultimate but are reconciled in the higher unity of the divine reality. The spiritual work of life consists in seeing through the appearances of opposition to the underlying unity, and the practitioner who acquires this vision is freed from the false either-or choices that characterize ordinary religious and political thought. This doctrine is a defining teaching of Kook's thought and provides the philosophical foundation for his ability to integrate apparently incompatible positions into a single synthetic vision.

The doctrine of the multi-leveled soul developed in volume two represents a sophisticated treatment of mystical anthropology in modern Jewish thought. Kook draws on the traditional doctrine of the five levels of the soul (nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, yechidah) but adds his own insights into the dynamics of inner spiritual life and the relationships between the different levels. The treatment integrates the older Lurianic and Cordoverian materials with insights from modern psychology and philosophy that Kook had encountered through his studies and through his disciple David Cohen who had been trained in the academic tradition. The result is a sophisticated mystical psychology that has continued to influence Jewish thinking about the structure of inner experience.

The doctrine of the cosmic process of unification developed in volume four teaches that the apparent diversity and conflict of the universe is moving toward a final unification in which all things will be revealed as expressions of the single divine reality. The historical process is one dimension of this larger cosmic process of unification, and the political-historical events of contemporary Zionism are moments in the unfolding of this larger movement. The doctrine of cosmic unification gives Kook's thought its eschatological orientation and provides the framework within which the more compact reflections of Orot become intelligible as parts of a single vision.

Benjamin Ish-Shalom's Rav Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook: Between Rationalism and Mysticism, published by SUNY Press in 1993, provides the most thorough academic treatment of Orot HaKodesh in English and shows how the work fits into the broader trajectory of Kook's mystical thought. Yehudah Mirsky's Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution, published by Yale University Press in 2014, provides the historical and biographical context within which the notebooks were composed and shows how David Cohen's editorial work shaped the published text.

Connections

Orot HaKodesh draws together the deepest currents of post-Lurianic Jewish mysticism, modern philosophical thought, and the historical experience of the early twentieth-century Jewish return to the Land. Its connections reach in many directions across the Kabbalistic and philosophical canon.

The work is the principal mystical treatise of Abraham Isaac Kook and is closely related to his other major mystical work Orot, the compact volume of mystical-Zionist meditations published during Kook's lifetime in 1920. Where Orot is shorter, more lyrical, and more directly focused on the religious significance of contemporary historical events, Orot HaKodesh is longer, more systematic, and more focused on the structure of mystical experience as such. The two works should be read together as the major expressions of Kook's mystical vision.

The Italian-Padovan tradition of Moshe Chaim Luzzatto is a major influence on Kook's mystical thought as developed in Orot HaKodesh. Kook studied Derech Hashem, Mesillat Yesharim, and Klach Pitchei Chokhmah carefully during his formative years and drew on Luzzatto's philosophical reconstruction of Lurianic Kabbalah throughout his own mystical writings. The doctrine of the special role of Eretz Yisrael in the divine plan, the doctrine of the cosmic significance of human action, and the doctrine of the rational coherence of the Lurianic system all derive in part from Luzzatto and provide foundations on which Kook builds his more elaborate mystical synthesis.

The Lurianic background of the work is fundamental. Kook draws constantly on the doctrines developed by Isaac Luria and his school in sixteenth-century Safed, particularly the doctrines of cosmic repair (tikkun) and the gathering of the divine sparks. The Lurianic texts Etz Chaim, Shaar HaGilgulim, and the related Lurianic literature provide the metaphysical framework within which Kook interprets the contemporary process of cosmic unification.

The Lithuanian Mitnagdic tradition of Chaim of Volozhin and Nefesh HaChaim shaped Kook's training and his theological orientation. Kook had studied at the Volozhin yeshiva and was deeply formed by the Lithuanian-style emphasis on Talmudic learning and the systematic theology of cosmic responsibility that Nefesh HaChaim had developed. The integration of this Lithuanian background with the more emotional and ecstatic streams of Hasidic and Italian-Padovan mysticism gives Orot HaKodesh its distinctive synthetic character.

The Hasidic tradition is an important influence even though Kook was not himself a Hasid. He read extensively in Hasidic literature and drew on the works of the Baal Shem Tov, Nachman of Breslov, the Maharal of Prague, and other figures of the broader Jewish mystical tradition. The integration of Hasidic, Mitnagdic, and Italian-Padovan elements is one of the distinctive features of Kook's synthesis as developed in Orot HaKodesh.

The foundational texts of Kabbalah stand behind the entire work. The Zohar, the Sefer Yetzirah, the Sefer HaBahir, and the doctrine of the sefirot are presupposed throughout Kook's mystical reflections, and he frequently uses the technical Kabbalistic vocabulary in ways that assume the reader's familiarity with the tradition.

The modern philosophical literature is an additional influence, mediated partly through David Cohen's academic background. Kook had read in the German philosophical literature of his day, particularly the neo-Kantian and Hegelian materials that Cohen had studied at Marburg, and traces of these influences appear in Orot HaKodesh in ways that distinguish it from purely traditional Kabbalistic literature.

Further Reading