HaChodesh: Rav Kook

HaChodesh, the first Mitzvah/Concept given to the Children of Israel as a nation, is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on a thought of Rav Kook’s on Morals & Mitzvot: “Secular civilization knows what is evil, but it does not know how to correct it. It learned about morals from the Tanach [Bible], but in cutting itself off from Israel and the commandments of the Torah, it separated man from the one-and-only Divine moral path…having abandoned the mitzvot, it never puts the teachings to practice… Mankind’s repression of life’s powerful, natural desires causes a deep inner tension which is doomed to explode.”

Rav A.Y. Kook, Lights on Orot (War and Peace), p.137