Zvi Yehuda Kook

Who was Zvi Yehuda Kook?

Zvi Yehuda Kook was a rabbi, leader of Religious Zionism and Rosh Yeshiva of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva. He was the son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, and named in honor of his maternal grandfather's brother, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Rabinowitch Teomim.

His teachings are partially responsible for the modern religious settlement movement in Judea and Samaria. Many of his ideological followers in the Religious Zionist movement settled there.

Under the leadership of Kook, with its center in the yeshiva founded by his father, Jerusalem's Mercaz HaRav, thousands of religious Jews campaigned actively against territorial compromise, and established numerous settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Many of these settlements were subsequently granted official recognition by Israeli governments, both right and left.