Kuk Avraham Itzhak ha-Kohen (1865, Griva, Vitebsk Governorate – 1935, Jerusalem) — rabbi and thinker.
Avraham Itzhak ha-Kohen Kuk was born into the family of Rabbi Shloyme-Zalman Kuk (1844–1929), from a lineage opposed to Hasidism; his mother, Perla Zlata, came from a family of Lubavitcher Hasidim. By age 11, he had written his first book — a commentary on the Psalms (Tehillim).
At 13, he moved to Lucyn to study under his mother’s uncle, Rabbi Eliezer Don-Yichye, and Rabbi Yaakov Rabinovich. In 1880, he returned to Griva and studied with his father and with Reuven ha-Levi, rabbi of Dvinsk; in 1883 — with Rabbi Haim Avraham Shapiro in Smorgon. From 1884 to 1886, he studied at the Volozhin Yeshiva.
In 1885, he married Bat-Sheva Alta, daughter of Rabbi Eliyahu David Rabinovich-Teomim, rabbi of Panevezys. In 1888, he was appointed rabbi of Zeimelis (Kovno Governorate), and in 1895 — of Bausk (Courland Governorate).
In 1904, he moved to Palestine, where he became rabbi of Jaffa. He supported the Zionist movement and developed a religious-philosophical concept of Zionism and its role in Jewish history, believing that the return of the Jewish people to Palestine marked the beginning of the Messianic era.
In 1914, he traveled to Europe to attend the conference of the Orthodox Agudat Israel movement, hoping to bring Orthodox Jewry closer to Zionism. The outbreak of World War I prevented his return to Palestine, and he temporarily headed a Jewish community in London.
After returning to Palestine in 1919, he became Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem; and with the establishment of the Chief Rabbinate in 1921, he was elected Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Palestine.
Kuk advocated for the synthesis of religious and secular knowledge and planned to establish a renewed yeshiva that would combine the study of Tanakh, Talmud, and secular sciences. In 1924, he founded the Merkaz ha-Rav Yeshiva in Jerusalem.
He was the author of numerous religious and philosophical works, later compiled into the volumes Orot ha-Teshuvah (Lights of Repentance, 1955), Orot (Lights, 1961), Orot ha-Kodesh (Lights of Holiness, vols. 1–3, 1963–64), and Igrot ha-Ra’ayah (Epistles of Rabbi Avraham Itzhak ha-Kohen Kuk, vols. 1–3, 1962–65). Excerpts in Russian were published in Izbrannoe (Jerusalem, 1981) and The Land of Israel and the People of Israel in the Teachings of Rabbi A. I. ha-Kohen Kuk (Jerusalem, n.d.).
In his later years, he played an active role in the defense of Abraham Stavsky, who was accused by members of the Haganah of murdering Haim Arlosoroff in 1933.
His second wife was a niece of Rabbi Eliyahu David Rabinovich-Teomim. They had two children: daughter Batya (wife of Rabbi Eliyahu Raanan) and son Zvi Yehuda (1890, Zeimelis, Kovno Governorate – 1982, Jerusalem), who moved to Palestine in 1904. Zvi Yehuda studied in a Jerusalem yeshiva, helped his father organize Merkaz ha-Rav, and succeeded him as its head. He authored many articles, collected in Le-Netivot Yisrael (On the Paths of Israel, 1967), and edited his father’s writings. He became the ideological leader of the Gush Emunim movement.
Brother — Dov Kuk (1871, Griva, Courland Governorate – 1950, Jerusalem), rabbi in Yelizavetgrad; in Palestine since 1925. His son Raphael (1900–1971) became Chief Rabbi of Tiberias in 1948; Raphael’s son Shlomo (1929–1971, Jerusalem) served as Chief Rabbi of Rehovot from 1968 to 1971.