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Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook
© Rabbi Eli Brackman
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook was born in Griva, Latvia in 1865. In 1904, he moved to Ottoman Palestine to assume the rabbinical post in Jaffa. The outbreak of the First World War caught him in Europe, and he was forced to remain in London for the remainder of the war.
While in London, he traveled to Oxford for short periods of time to research and view the Hebrew manuscripts at the Bodleian library.
He refers to his visits to Oxford in his works and calls the city in Hebrew "Ihr HaSeforim" (City of Books).
Rabbi Kook went on to become the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine. He passed away in 1935.
