Who wouldn’t want to attend a seudah shlishit with R. Kook? (Even I would, and I––don’t tell–-don’t love SS!)
Late in the day on Saturdays, Rav Kook would hold seudah shlishit––the third meal of the Sabbath––in the Hasidic style, with singing and evocative homilies. The meals brought him an eclectic group of followers: Hasidim and intellectuals, East End Jewish radicals, workingmen, pious Jews from Leeds and Manchester as well as from all over London. On th eShavuot holiday nights, as he had in Jaffa, he would stand all night at a lectern, lecturing on Maimonides’ Book of the Commandments and the roots of jurisprudence. During zeppelin bombings, he would stand by the door of the communal bomb shelter in Chaikin’s basement, the better to see anyone wandering in the street and call them in. When they were all safely inside, he would, in a mix of prayer and pastoral becalming, sit and recite, over and over, the six verses of Psalm 43: Grant me justice, O God, and wage my struggle with a faithless nation, from a man of deceit and injustice save me…
Also, how lovely is this? (From Rav Kook himself.)
When I lived in London, I would visit the National Gallery, and my favorite pictures were those of Rembrandt. I really think that Rembrandt was a tzaddik. Do you know that when I first saw Rembrandt’s works, they reminded me of the legend about the creation of light? We are told that when God created light, it was so strong and pellucid that one could see from one end of the world to the other, but God was afraid that the wicked might abuse it. What did He do? He reserved that light for the righteous men when the Messiah should come. But now and then there are great men who are blessed and privileged to see it. I think that Rembrandt was one of them, and the light in his pictures is the very light that was originally created by God almighty.
Agreed!
Itinerantdaughter's Blog 