Yehudah Mirsky is Full Professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. A former US State Department official, he has written widely on religion, politics, and culture for the New York Times, the Economist, the Washington Post, and many other publications. He won the Jewish Book Council's Sami Rohr Choice Award for his earlier work, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution.

Introduction
The Work in Brief
Precis
Mapping Rav Kook
Many Editorial Hands
Academic Approaches
The Missing Early Decades in Rav Kook's
Corpus
Towards Expressivism and the Subject
Rav Kook and the Medieval Philosophical
Tradition
The Early Writings
Self-Cultivation, Philosophical Ethics,
Mussar

Chapter One: Childhood and Early Years: Between
Mitnagdism, Hasidism and Haskalah 42 Rabbinic Humanism and Haskalah
Geographic and Cultural Background
Family Backgound
Social Changes: Haskalah's Shift from
Enlightenment to Radicalism
Rabbinic Maskilim
Childhood and Early Education
Studies in Lyutsin and Smorgon and
Engagement with Haskalah
Betrothal and Aderet
Avraham Kook Goes to Volozhin
Marriage, Poverty and First Rabbinic
Post
Literary Debut
'Ittur Sofrim
Loss

Chapter 2: All in the Mind: The Writings of
the Zeimel Period
The Small-Town Rabbinate
Talmudic Commentary and a Sage's
Discontents
Halakhic Writings and a Touch of
Philosophy
Hevesh Pe'er
The Primacy of the Mind in Hevesh Pe'er
Midbar Shur
Moshe Hayim Luzzatto
Midbar Shur and the Pursuit of
Perfection, Jewish and Universal
An Elegy for His First Wife
Conclusion

Chapter 3: Boisk at the Crossroads of Mussar
and Tiqqun

Unease in Zeimel and the Influence of
Eliasberg
Boisk
Developments in Yeshiva Culture and the
Mussar Movement
The Turn to Interiority as a Defining Theme
of this Period
: The Self and Tiqqun
Lithuanian Kabbalah
Pinkasim 15 & 16
"The Rustlings of My Heart": Rav
Kook and B.M. Levin
Conclusion

Chapter 4: 'Eyn Ayah: Intellect,
Imagination, Self-Expression, Prophecy

'Eyn Ayah and Modernity's Expressivist
Turn
The Work: Genre, Method and the Study of
Aggadah in Rabbinic Circles
Two Introductions to the Work
Self-Perfection
Intellect, Imagination, Feeling
Perfection of the Individual and the Whole
and the Internalization of Kabbalah Strategies of Containment
The Renewal of Prophecy and the Mission of
the Artist
The Emergence of Dialectic
The Problem of Self-Love
The Study of Aggadah and Spiritual
Individualism
Concluding Remarks on Expressivism and
Subjectivity

Chapter 5: The Turn Towards Nationalism:
Between Ideology and Utopia, or, Ethics and Eschatology

Jewish Nationalism in Eastern Europe
Early Mentions of Nationalism and Hints of
Apocalypse
First Responses to the Zionist Movement
First Response to Orthodox Anti-Zionism
Ha-Peles
The First Essay: Israel's Universal
Mission
Interlude: Creation of the Mizrahi
The Second Essay: Mobilizing Literature
The Third Essay: Ethics, History and
Eschatology
Alexandrov's Response: Rav Kook and Ahad
Ha-Am
'Eyn Ayah Passages on History and
Eschatology
Assessing the Essays: Ideology and
Utopia

Chapter 6:'The New Guide of the Perplexed' 'The
Last in Boisk': Making Sense of Heresy en Route to Zion

To Jaffa and Palestine
The Second Aliyah
'The New Guide of the Perplexed'
'The Last in Boisk': Heresy, Nietzsche,
Apocalypse
The Journal
Messiah ben Joseph
Expressivism and the Song of Songs
Heresy and Eschatology
Ethics, Jesus, Nietzsche, Qelippah
Working with Heresy, Reworking Torah Study
and Theology
Leaving Boisk

Conclusion

Transformations in the Land of Israel
Seven Shifts: From To-Down to Bottom-Up
Philosophy, Mysticism, Experience
Implications for the Study of Religion:
Theology as Autobiography
Implications for Rav Kook Studies
Berdyczewsky and Rav Kook: Between Rupture
and Dialectic