Dr. Yehudah Mirsky, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, will discuss “Mystical Zionism’s Surprising Origins: Rav Kook’s Early Decades” on Wednesday, January 31 at 7 p.m. Presented by the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers University, this virtual talk is free and open to the public. Advance registration is required using this link: http://tinyurl.com/ pmfrsjsf.

Rav Abraham Isaac Kook was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the land of Israel, an important theologian, a foundational thinker of religious Zionism, and the Zionist movement’s most influential and controversial rabbinic advocate. Mirsky will examine how Rav Kook’s very unconventional Zionism emerged from decades of meditation on metaphysics, ethics and the distinctive spiritual challenges of modernity.

Mirsky is professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, as well as a faculty member of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies. He is the author of the award-winning volume “Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution.” He teaches courses on Zionism and Israel, Jewish intellectual and religious history, and human rights. He received a BA at Yeshiva College, JD at Yale and PhD (religion) at Harvard, and rabbinic ordination in Jerusalem.