Biography
Rav Kook was born in Zaumel in the Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Žeimelis in Northern Lithuania), where his father was a rabbi. His mother is his father's second wife Reiza Rivka, niece of Eliyahu David Rabinovich-Teomim, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem along with Shmuel Salant. In 1896 his father with his entire family moved to Bauska, Latvia to be the rabbi there.
In 1904 he moved to Jaffa when his father was appointed Chief Rabbi of the city, then part of Ottoman-controlled Palestine. He studied Gemara under the guidance of Rabbi Reuven Gotfreud, the son-in-law of Rabbi Yoel Moshe Salomon, the founder of Petakh Tiqwa, then under R. Moshe Zeidel and Benjamin Levin, however his main teacher remained his father throughout his life. In 1906 he went to one of the most prominent yeshivas in Jerusalem of that time Toras Chaim, in the future building of Ateret Kohanim. There he befriended R.Zerakh Epstein. His studies there did not last long. By 1910 he was already preoccupied with publication of his father's writings in Jaffa. There he published three of his books: Tzvi laTzadik, Shevet Haaretz and in 1913 Hatarbut haYisraelit(The Israeli Culture). One of his main collaborators in that activity was R.Yaakov Moshe Charlap, a future head of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva together with R. Zvi Yehuda. Seeing his lack of time to truly study Torah as most of people his age, he decided to remove himself from public activity for some time. At first he went to Porat Yoseph, the main Sephardic yeshiva of Jerusalem and then he left to Halberstadt, Germany and studied there in the local yeshiva. He also attended the local university philosophy lectures.
With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he was arrested as a citizen of the Russian Empire, the enemy country, but was soon released and joined his father in Switzerland, where he was stuck due to the war. In 1920 he returned to the then British Palestine and began teaching at Netzakh Israel school. A year later, he went to Europe to attempt promotion of his father's new movement "Degel Yerushalayim" amongst the great rabbis of European.
In 1922 he married Chava Lea Hutner in Warsaw. Chava Lea died childless in 1944, and R. Tzvi Yehuda remained a widower until his death nearly 40 years later. From 1923 he served as the administrative director of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, and then after R.kharlap died in 1952 he became Rosh Yeshiva until his own death. After the Six Day War in 1967 he induced the Israeli government to approve the building of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and sent his students to that mission. He tried to strengthen the Chief Rabbinate, which he saw as the beginning of the future Sanhedrin. He died in 1982.
Read more about this topic: Zvi Yehuda Kook
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