(1865-1935) A Jewish rabbi of Russian origi. Kook immigrated to Palestine in 1904. He was involved in efforts to secure the Balfour Declaration, which declared British support of a future homeland for the Jews in Palestine. In 1921, he was appointed the Ashkenazi Rabbi of Jerusalem and soon after became the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Eretz Israel. As part of his theological beliefs surrounding Jewish settlement of the biblical land of Israel, he tried to build channels of communication between secular Jewish Zionists, religious Jewish Zionists and non-Zionist Orthodox Jews. Kook believed God’s plan for the Jewish people and the messianic era of peace in the world would come through the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish state. See Ish-Shalom, Benjamin. Rav Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook: Between Rationalism and Mysticism. New York: State University of New York, 1993; and Rachmani, Rav Hillel. “Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.” Jewish Virtual Library. 19 August 2011. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Rav_Kook.html.  http://www.justvision.org/glossary/kook-rabbi-avraham-yitzhak-hacohen