Professor Marc B. Shapiro has new blog post up:
As I am writing this people are once again outraged by something R. Ovadiah Yosef said, in that he attributed the fires in Israel to lack of Sabbath observance. Obviously, this is not the sort of comment that appeals to those with a modern temperament, but in traditional societies it is an expectation of the people that the leading rabbis will find some spiritual reason to explain tragedies. So why I am mentioning this now? Because in the document from Arieli, no. 38, he quotes R. Kook as saying something that people will find even more shocking than anything R. Ovadiah has ever said. (I don’t think you will find the students of R. Kook ever repeating it.) R. Kook wondered if the 1929 pogrom in Hebron was perhaps due to the fact that the Hebron Yeshiva brought in their “modern” ways to Israel, by which he means their way of dressing, hair style and beardless faces.
